(Nothing to see here: Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins Announces The Closure of Community Care Access Centres) The horror stories continue for the people of Ontario. Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced today that the government will be closing all Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) in favor of cost cutting measures, and moving the home […]
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OPSEU Diablogue: “Care as a relationship” is key to good long-term care: research
What are long-term care residences around the world doing right? That’s the question an international research team travelled across North America and Europe to find out. Led by Pat Armstrong and Donna Baines, researchers visited nursing homes in C…
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Frustrated nursing staff quit CarePartners as OPSEU charges unfair labour practices
Continuity of care is important to the delivery of home care. Each time a caregiver changes there is a necessary rebuilding of relationships. If caregivers are continually turning over, it is much more difficult to notice changes in the patient’s … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Home Care: Giving and taking away
The government gives, the home care agencies take away. Many of OPSEU’s home care agencies are presently at the bargaining table. You’d think this would be the best of times for the professional and support staff that conducts the often … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: CCACs not entirely to blame for high home care administrative costs
What to do with the Community Care Access Centres? Yesterday’s Toronto Star column by Bob Hepburn suggests we should roll them into the Local Health Integration Networks and send the CCAC CEOs packing. The urge to spank the CCAC board … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: CCAC CEOs may not have enjoyed their cornflakes this morning
You would think the Community Care Access Centres would tread a little carefully these days. The Tories want to get rid of them. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario would like to fold them into the LHINs. We’re creeping into … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Should the LHINs really be the e-Harmony of health care providers?
When the province decided to call its most recent crown agencies Local Health Integration Networks, it was clear where the emphasis lay. Rather than plan a system based on need, it appears the primary function of the LHIN was to … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Home care safety report at odds with new directions at OACCAC
By now every Ontarian has heard how hospitals are unsafe. Patients are told the shorter the stay, the less risk, in order the help them understand the need to vacate their bed long before they feel physically able to go … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Home care – it’s critical we get it right this time
Ontario’s Community Care Access Centres could have been very different had events unfolded differently in the early 1990s. At the beginning of that decade home care was considered to have more of a leg in social services than health care. … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Home care reform: how wrong are these incentives?
We probably wouldn’t have believed it had we not received the documents outlining the new plan for specialized home care funding. It’s staggering in its ability to further complicate administration of home care and create so-called “efficiencies” for which the … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: De-integrating home support services in Ontario
Ontario has promised three million new hours of home care personal support services over the next three years. While it sounds like a lot, keep in mind that about 32 million hours of public home care are delivered annually and … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Perth and Smiths Falls communities meet tonight and tomorrow to tackle deep hospital cuts
Tonight is the first of two community meetings around cuts to the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital. Cuts at the two-site rural hospital corporation are particularly severe. The Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital is seeking to find 6 … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Living Longer, Living Well: Muddled seniors strategy undermines universality of home care
There have been fewer than the usual suspects applauding the release of Living Longer, Living Well, Dr. Samir Sinha’s anticipated recommendations for a new seniors strategy for Ontario. In the early days of 2013, maybe nobody is yet paying attention. … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Proposed amendment tightens cap on home support services
The government repeatedly likes to talk about reforming the health system to be more patient-centered, yet often it appears to be headed in the opposite direction. The latest head scratcher is a new amendment to regulation 386/99 of the Home … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Nursing home placement — Who has the greater crisis?
Yesterday we looked at the challenge of CCACs is managing scarcity amid too few available nursing home beds in the province. One of the ways of placing a client into the nursing home faster – albeit with a three-month median … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: What took so long for community funding to arrive?
Community health care received the biggest percentage increase from this spring’s provincial budget, signalling the government’s intention to transition more of the health system into home care and other community supports. At four per cent clearly…
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: CCACs could play expanded role as direct home care providers
Doris Grinspun, the executive director of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) has been a tireless defender of public not-for-profit health care. We’ve seen her speak truth to power at numerous conferences and public events. When she advocates on … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: VON Hamilton nurses subject to demeaning cyber-tracking
Nurses at VON Hamilton may be wary of construction detours en route to seeing their home care patients. The VON branch is taking employee tracking to an extreme by issuing Blackberry devices that will not only record arrival time at … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: New Tory health plan is simple – too simple
The new Ontario Tory plan for health care is simple – eliminate the Local Health Integration Networks and the Community Care Access Centres and let between 30-40 “hub” hospitals run the health care system – or at least the bits … Continue reading →
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Stories we couldn’t let pass by this week
CCACs hire 144 direct care nurses This month the government announced 900 new nursing positions to come from their 2007 commitment to 9,000 new nurses for the health system. Among them are 144 nurses who will go into the schools … Continue reading →
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