Listening to Minister Christian Dubé, whom I admire for his courage, talk about the effects of overcrowding in emergency rooms and the fact that a high percentage of elderly people who present themselves there should not come, and that we hospitalizes them because they are too frail to return home, I am surprised to note that he almost never talks about home care, which could reduce this percentage, but rather about increasing the financial resources of the RPA.
Currently, in several regions of Quebec, this home care is not or very little available. Yes, I know, we are short of staff and resources, but in the meantime, the problem is growing. And when I see the difficulties that will be caused by the implementation of the reform, I am not reassured! Having made some structural reforms whose scale was not that which the current project will have when I was Deputy Minister of Health, I see coming the “chasing” of job definitions, job classification, remuneration and discussions on travel to the agency for hundreds of civil servants, etc. Furthermore, I find that we don’t talk much about the strategies that will be put in place to involve older people in upcoming decision-making. There is indeed, in the law, a mention of a users’ committee, but what its tasks will be remains vague. Increasing the funds paid to RPAs to purchase places will help to further compartmentalize elderly people and make them disappear from the landscape. At least Minister Sonia Bélanger, who took the time to listen to older people, is involved in the development of action plans. Hopefully his experience will be taken into account.
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