During a summit on home care in Quebec, this doctor who has 40 years of practice in home care sounded the alarm.
The National Meeting on Home Support brings together healthcare professionals, researchers and different organizations to formulate some specific recommendations to the Legault government. Home support services range from domestic help services to babysitting, troubleshooting, nutrition, family tasks, personal care, etc.
In her speech, Dr. Dechêne concluded that Quebec is heading straight into the wall because it is at the “back of the pack” in the OECD in terms of investment in home care and home support.
This is particularly because the doctors’ unions and the Order of Nurses have “too much power” and impose a vision centered on “the hospital”, a “magic word” for politicians, she lamented.
And there is also the “magical thinking” of baby boomers who are too afraid to think about the loss of autonomy which occurs on average 6 to 8 years before death.
According to her, there are no real health services in living environments, private seniors’ residences, or intermediate resources, to ensure the autonomy and maintenance of seniors at home.
“Don’t be surprised that our emergency rooms are overflowing with these patients,” she noted, while in other countries, doctors and nurses provide services at home.
No less than 90% of Quebecers do not have access to home medical services, and “that’s where the problem lies,” she continues.
By 2030, Quebec will move from 15th to 6th in the world for the proportion of people aged 85 and over, she noted.
In a morning speech, the Minister responsible for Seniors, Sonia Bélanger, indicated that fewer seniors are now waiting to obtain home support services, but it will be impossible to eliminate the waiting list.
We are still far from a universal service offered to all elderly people, as recommended by the Commissioner for Health and Welfare.
The waiting list, which was 21,000 people last year, was reduced to 16,500 people as of March 31.
But we are still above the figures before the pandemic. The number of people waiting for a first service increased from 13,250 on March 31, 2019 to 17,226 on March 31, 2022.
There will always be elderly people who will have to wait to have the services they need to remain independent at home, she suggested.
“It will not be to bring it back to zero within a year, it is impossible to do that,” she indicated in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“There’s always going to be a waiting list because there are always people signing up every day.”
The Commissioner for Health and Well-being, Joanne Castonguay, who gave a worrying assessment of the home support system in Quebec at the beginning of the year, nevertheless believes that everyone should have access to services if they require them – like health care, which is universal.
“The universal nature (of home support) is non-negotiable in our society, so yes, it is a principle which is important because it is important for our population, I think it is very clear,” said argued the deputy commissioner for evaluation and principal scientist of the organization, Georges-Charles Thiebaut, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“If we want to preserve a fair society that ensures protection for all of its population, it is absolutely essential.”
On Tuesday, the Liberal Party called for a public debate on the universality of home support.
“For loss of autonomy, the universal system is more vague,” recognized Philippe Voyer, full professor at the Faculty of Nursing at Laval University.
Liberal MP Linda Caron, who participated in the National Meeting, deplored that the minister did not attend this summit all day, to take the pulse of healthcare organizations and professionals.
“While we’re talking, there are people waiting for services,” lamented the general director of the Network for Cooperation of Social Economy Enterprises in Home Help, J. Benoît Caron.
“I’m in an emergency!” he said.
In 2023, the system only met 10.7% of home support needs, stated the Commissioner of Health and Welfare: it provided 25.4 million hours of services, while 234 million hours were required.
Ms. Bélanger, however, indicated that 37 million hours of services were provided in the last year.
“Worrying situation”
In her report, the Commissioner for Health and Wellbeing stated that “the current situation is worrying” and that this “endangers the viability of services for the future”.
The minister had questioned the commissioner’s methodology.
“The Quebec home support ecosystem was developed in another era. Today, it no longer meets the needs of the population and it is unsuitable for future needs,” we could read.
“Accessibility is the most problematic dimension of home support services,” noted the commissioner.
The system currently costs $7.6 billion per year, but in 2040 it will cost $16.5 billion, or $8.9 billion more per year.
However, it costs much less to provide home support services than to provide accommodation for reasons of loss of autonomy.
In the report, we can read that for the year 2023, “the average annual operating cost for a person receiving home support services (home itself or seniors’ residence) is estimated at $13,900. This cost varies from $67,400 to $96,800 for a person in accommodation, depending on the type of accommodation (intermediate resources-family type resources and CHSLD).”
