What you may not know about publicly funded home care
Originally posted @ allaboutestates.ca on August 24, 2015:
I read a recent report from the Home Care Ontario and I thought I would share some interesting facts about publicly funded home care. In Ontario, a day in hospital costs on average $842; a day in long-term care costs $126; and a day in home or community care costs on average $42 .
Publicly funded home care is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care which is funneled through the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) and then delivered via 14 Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) across Ontario.
In 2013-2014, almost 700,000 clients received home care funded by the CCAC. Fifty-eight percent of these clients were seniors.
Service provider organizations deliver care to eligible Ontario residents and 73% of care delivered was personal support and homemaking. Care at home includes the provision of services by a Personal Support Worker (PSW) who can assist primarily with personal care (bathing, dressing) and meal preparation. The goal is for seniors to remain at home for as long as they can.
Each trip to the hospital besides being costly to the government, is first and foremost difficult for the patient and might even be hazardous to their health (see my blog: hospitals are not good places for sick people).
The concern is how much or how little publicly funded care (PSW support) can be provided to the senior at home? These numbers are not published and I can tell you from my own experience and those of my clients, it is just not enough.
For those at the end of their days, the cost of providing palliative care in the last month of a patient’s life averages about:
• $1,100 per day in an acute-care hospital bed
• $630 to $770 per day in a bed in a palliative-care unit
• $460 per day in a hospice bed
• under $100 per day where at-home care is provided. (AG 2014)
Home is where we want live and for many of us home is where we want to die as well. You might want to ask whether homecare is an election issue.
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