'Elder culture shock': Improving Manitoba home care slow following 2015 audit
An audit made 28 recommendations in 2015 and more than a year later, not one has been fully completed
It's been a year since Manitoba's auditor general made more than two dozen recommendations to improve the home care system but so far, none has been implemented, provincial officials say.
The auditor general's report, released in August 2015, said Manitoba's health regions needed to pay more attention to how reliable the home care system is and how fast it can be delivered. At the time, people had to wait more than a month to get into the system in southern Manitoba.
Concerns were also raised about money spent on staff who weren't actually visiting clients, to the tune of $4 million, the report said, and 16,000 client visits were cancelled because staff were unavailable.
"The audit also found that the time allotted for staff to perform home care tasks was not always reasonable, potentially causing staff to rush through certain visits," the report said.
Concerns mimic experiences
Lynn White told CBC earlier this month that health care aides missed numerous visits with her father, some weren't aware of what to do and some were rushed due to time constraints. She feels the system failed her family and others.
The auditor general recommended the province and health regions improve the timeliness of patient assessments and clearly state what services need to be delivered, how often and what backup plans are in place should they be required.
The report also recommended reviewing time allotments for certain tasks and avoiding scheduling multiple visits at once and shifts that exceed the time available.
Province working on plan
Province officials said they're working on the problems.
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"Work is underway at the provincial and regional levels on implementing recommendations made by the office of the auditor general following a review of home care services in the Winnipeg and Southern Health-Santé Sud health regions," a provincial spokesperson said when asked for a progress update.
"Responding to the recommendations will be a multi-year process."
None of the 28 recommendations has been fully completed, but a team is working on a clear framework on what the health regions need to provide, the spokesperson said.
A few improvements have been made. Southern Health started scheduling resource co-ordinators on evenings and weekends as of Nov. 27 and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has made improvements to scheduling and has started offering scheduling services seven days a week, the province said.
Communication and education tools have also been put in place, the province said.
'Elder culture shock'
Wendy Sutton runs a Winnipeg initiative called Where Next? A Pathway to Caregivers that is a resource for families who have to care for a loved one. She operates a blog and offers workshops on the topic.
"I view it as elder culture shock," she said. "We knew this demographic was coming, we didn't prepare for it and now all of the systems are overwhelmed with the need."
It's becoming harder and harder for anyone to make changes to systems such as home care and personal care because of the backlogs each face, Sutton said.
More and more people are looking for help caring for their parents and loved ones on their own because of the long wait times and service issues, she said.
"To me, we need to take a more proactive situation," she said. "We need to be helping these people [families] and treating [them] as equal partners in the health-care system."