The Ministry of Health and Social Services’ policy for home care is called “At home: the first choice.” They have a lot of humor at the MSSS. In fact, since the ban on using independent labor, we no longer have any options for offering night services to our dying at home. Because, as you can probably imagine, dying at home is difficult.
Sometimes people die slowly, over months. Relatives become exhausted, when there are any. The other option would be to send these patients to CHSLDs, but, as you can see, there won’t be room any time soon. You could always wait for a room in a beautiful seniors’ home, built entirely of marble, which could perhaps accommodate, by 2058, a few dozen seniors, real lottery winners!
So, in the meantime, “home is the first choice” is out of spite. But since it is important that patients can make free and informed choices about their care, it seems crucial to me to inform them well. This is why I believe that the new top guns of the Santé Québec agency should be transparent with Quebecers and give them the truth: there is no money for home care. No money for CLSCs, to hire workers, to create night shifts, nothing, no, nothing…
However, know that there are millions of dollars available to develop technological concepts, such as virtual home hospitalization. This, you see, will allow a few rare vigorous individuals capable of literacy and wifi connection to “chat” with their specialist with an iPad.
So there is money for virtual teleconsultation. But not to hire night care attendants who could allow us to keep patients with severe loss of autonomy and at the end of their life at home.
Exit humanism in health care. But, fortunately, there is a very simple solution: call 9-1-1! In Quebec, end-of-life care generally happens like this: on a stretcher in a crowded emergency room. Because, when you have a patient who is dying at home with no possibility of relieving them due to a lack of human resources, well, “at home” becomes the last choice supported by the government.