Home-care scheduling chaos worsening

Home care workers feeling overwhelmed and burned out because of heavy caseloads say leadership’s response to a recent Free Press report on the city’s centralized scheduling office only intensified the pressure on staff over the past weekend.

“Expectations are already way too high, and they constantly ignore our concerns,” said one employee, who asked not to be identified, fearing the consequences of speaking out.

“The direction on Friday was to fill all of the calls for the weekend by Friday at 4 p.m., which is impossible.”

Between Friday and Sunday, more than 2,100 scheduled visits by nurses and health-care aides were cancelled with notice, said the employee, whose position is being withheld to protect their identity.

That figure represented about a quarter of the visits that were expected to go unfilled late last week. Internal data showed more than 8,660 visits were at risk of being unassigned heading into the weekend.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said Tuesday that 727 visits were cancelled on Saturday, while another 782 were shelved Sunday — significantly lower than figures from late last week.

The lower total of missed visits came after the WRHA was told last week to remedy the situation, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Tuesday.

Asagwara said they are also working quickly to bring more “expertise” to look at the system and recommend changes.

“A fresh set of eyes,” Asagwara said, adding those people could be installed within days.

Some of the experts will include front-line workers, including nurses and health-care aides, who Asagwara called “rock stars” in wanting to provide the best possible care for clients.

They will work closely with WRHA leadership and the province, the minister said.

The situation suggests enough time has passed to indicate the switch to a centralized scheduling office hasn’t worked, Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said Tuesday.

“It’s been four months since they rolled it out… and I think it’s incumbent on the minister to say they tried something and it didn’t work and maybe it’s time to revert back to the old scheduling system,” Cook said, adding she has heard similar concerns from nurses and health-care aides, and raised them during question period in April, only to be told by Asagwara that she was fear-mongering.

“Worse, they assured Manitobans these issues were being addressed and resolved very, very quickly. We now know that was not the case. These problems persist. If the scheduling system is the problem, let’s fix it.”

Asagwara shot back, saying it was under the former Tory government that the 2023 death of cancer patient Katherine Ellis, who was incorrectly classified and denied timely home care, led to a review.

That review produced 21 recommendations, including the shift to a centralized scheduling office.

The WRHA centralized its home-care scheduling system in March, in an effort to improve communication, workload and client support. The overhaul has been harshly criticized by workers, who have complained of long wait times in contacting the central office.

“The critic has a short memory, and would do well to understand where this rollout came from,” Asagwara said. “I think it’s incredibly disingenuous of the health critic to comment on a system that is a direct result of the PCs’ failings.”

On Tuesday, two employees told the Free Press that leadership pushed staff, including resource co-ordinators, to work additional hours.

While staff were previously only permitted to take on full shifts, management reportedly said they could now pick up partial hours to help manage the growing backlog.

“Their desperation was showing,” one employee said.

Added another: “They wanted them to ensure that visits were covered until the following Wednesday, which is hard to do when you’re already trying to cover thousands of visits that are for the same day and next day.”

While leadership was physically present at the office over the weekend, employees said they didn’t check in to offer help or support.

“Their presence is being received as an intimidation factor; that we must be on our best behaviour while they are here,” an employee who worked the weekend said. “Our breaks were also scheduled for the first time since moving here, which makes us feel like children who have to be constantly micromanaged.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming weekend, internal data shows 8,152 home-care visits — affecting 2,860 clients — remain unfilled for Saturday and Sunday. The WRHA, which oversees about 16,500 home visits daily, has said those numbers are fluid and often fluctuate up to the day of service.

Their latest seven-day average for cancelled visits, they said last week, was 3.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, a new voicemail system meant to prioritize urgent calls has been rolled out haphazardly, employees say.

“Nurses and health-care aides are leaving messages on the wrong line, and they are also scheduling people to only answer phone calls for the entirety of their shift,” one said.

“It seems their general response to the health minister’s questions is to offer as much overtime as people want and put increased pressure and blame on the schedulers who are already burned out from working as hard as we can with the limited number of staff we have.

“This is not sustainable. The mood in the office is toxic, people are struggling with their mental and physical health, and we are tired of coming into work each day feeling like things will continue to get worse.”

“The pressures are high,” another employee said. “The expectations are high. The support is low, and the wild thing is that they tell us that we should be ‘fully staffed’ now, but then post over 50 available shifts for the weekend… if we had enough staff, we would not be needing to post that many available shifts for office staff.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca