The government must completely change its way of caring for seniors, which is too focused on accommodation in CHSLDs and not enough on home care, if it wants to confront the massive aging of the population.
“The current system is financially unsustainable,” warns Health and Welfare Commissioner Joanne Castonguay, who today published her fourth and final evaluation on the performance of home care. It faces a growing imbalance between the supply of home services and needs.”
The commissioner made several recommendations to the government to improve its poor performance with seniors wishing to continue living at home. Deeming the situation worrying, she affirmed that “the next few years will be decisive”.
- Listen to the interview with commissioner Joanne Castonguay on Benoit Dutrizac’s show via QUB :
Unmet needs
In 2023, the long-term care and services system manages to offer only 116.7 million hours in total, or just over a third of current needs, which are expected to increase enormously in the coming years.
However, accommodation accounts for 62% of expenses in long-term care, for only 16% of users, she argued. Ms. Castonguay believes that the criteria for admission to CHSLDs should also be restricted, for the most serious cases.
“While the public system meets nearly 100% of CHSLD needs and 68.8% of intermediate resource needs-family-type resources, it only meets 10.7% of home support needs” , she writes.
In addition, spending on home support services in overall health spending increased from 4% in 2003-2004 to 4.5% in 2021-2022, which ranks Quebec among the Canadian provinces with resources Financial support for home support services is the lowest, according to the report.
She also warns that costs will explode, predicting that long-term care will cost nearly $9 billion more per year in 2040, not counting labor needs.
Pitfalls
She points out that the various programs in place all have different criteria, lacking consistency and increasing the difficulties in obtaining care. She also suggests the creation of regional offices to simplify access to services.
She also suggests that elected officials review the tax credit for home support, which currently favors residences for seniors (RPA), rather than seniors actually living at home. She believes that the government should further protect the financial capacity of caregivers.