(Quebec) In addition to not providing all seniors with severe loss of autonomy with home care that meets their needs, Quebec greatly underestimates the additional cost it would have to bear by 2028 to meet to the aging of the population. It is heading straight into the wall, says Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc.
Posted at 10:48 a.m.
“If no changes are made, seniors with a great loss of autonomy will not all have access to public long-term care by 2028 or to a sufficient intensity of services. This is true both in long-term accommodation and in home support, ”she wrote in her report tabled Wednesday in the National Assembly.
Quebec navigates by sight and does not plan worthy of the name of long-term public accommodation for seniors in great autonomy. “He also did not define how he would reorganize and fund long-term care in the context of the shift to home support,” says Guylaine Leclerc.
This turn has some failures. In 2020-2021, for 59% of the 15,212 people aged 70 or over with a significant loss of autonomy who benefited from home support services, less than 5% of their needs were met. The expected intensity of services is simply not there.
The AG notes that the MSSS scenarios for meeting growing demand over the next few years “do not provide for any catch-up aimed at reducing the current deficit of home support services”. They “do not make it possible to meet the needs of all the additional 25,599 seniors aged 70 or over expected by the MSSS by 2028-2029 and who will need long-term care comparable to that offered in long-term accommodation, especially since these demand forecasts are incomplete”.
Moreover, Quebec plans to provide more care for only about 47% to 68% of these seniors. The range of services it intends to offer is insufficient, since its estimate “represents less than a third of the number of hours of services required for a senior with a great loss of autonomy”.
Budget planning is deficient. The AG was unable to reconcile the various data provided by the Ministry of Finance on the subject. Quebec is not able to quantify the annual cost of home support services for a senior, contenting itself with vaguely estimating that it would be equivalent to the cost of accommodation in a public CHSLD (nearly $100,000 per year).
The additional direct measures planned by the government for home support are on average $340 million per year by 2025-2026.
However, according to a conservative calculation, Guylaine Leclerc estimates that two billion dollars more per year would be needed to cover the needs of seniors aged 70 or over with a great loss of autonomy. This means that Quebec is underestimating the cost by approximately $1.7 billion.