Home-care solution no solution at all

Opinion

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has rolled out a new centralized scheduling system for home-care services and, according to many who work in the system, it’s failing badly.

It’s having a negative impact on vulnerable clients who rely on home care for their everyday needs. It may also be contributing to hospital overcrowding.

That is not what most Manitobans expected when the NDP promised voters during the 2023 provincial election that it would “fix” health care and improve services for patients.

Several nurses and other home-care workers told the Free Press last week that the new scheduling system, implemented last month, is inefficient and chaotic. It is not doing a good job of supporting the individual needs of clients, particularly those who rely on regular visits for things like insulin doses, medical care and meals.

“I’ve been working in home care for 25 years, and I’ve never experienced this kind of confusion or chaos,” one nurse said.

Prior to the change, scheduling was done through dozens of locations by three separate entities. The WRHA, which runs the province’s publicly funded home-care system in Winnipeg, said the move to a centralized system was necessary to make it more efficient and to improve client care.

But many who work in the system say the opposite has occurred, leading to some clients not getting care for days on end. Some workers say the changes have resulted in overlapping assignments and an increase in cancelled or delayed visits. In some cases, staff are tending to clients they are unfamiliar with, which is compromising continuity of care.

The Manitoba Nurses Union says the new scheduling system has caused widespread disruption, leading to the resignation of many staff. MNU president Darlene Jackson said the union had urged the health authority to do a pilot project of the new system prior to its full rollout, presumably to identify some of the problems we are now seeing. Unfortunately, that request fell on deaf ears.

So now the system has been thrown into chaos and clients are suffering.

That is unacceptable. Thousands of Manitobans rely on home-care services for their most basic needs. Any changes to the scheduling system should have been carried out carefully and methodically, not in the haphazard way that has been described by staff.

Home care is a critical part of Manitoba’s health-care system. It allows many clients who require assistance to remain in their homes for longer periods of time, often delaying a move to a personal care home or a semi-support environment.

Home care also helps speed up hospital discharges by providing patients with care at home instead of prolonged stays in expensive institutionalized settings.

The latter is critically important for overcrowded hospitals which continue to struggle with “access block,” where newly admitted patients linger sometimes for days in emergency department hallways because there are no medical beds available for them.

Health-care services are interrelated. When one component fails, it can trigger a domino effect in other parts of the system. That is especially true for home care. When it does not function at an optimal level, it can cause a backlog in hospitals and put more strain on primary care services, such as clinics and family doctors’ offices.

More importantly, under the new scheduling system, many clients are suffering by not getting the service and care they deserve.

The NDP government should intervene immediately and take whatever steps are necessary to fix the problem. That is, after all, what they promised Manitobans a year and a half ago when they asked for their vote.