OCSA Pre-budget consultation submission to support home and community care
Three Key Investments into Home and Community Care Needed to Safeguard the Future Sustainability of our Health System
The Ontario Community Support Association (OCSA) is an organization that represents and advocates for the home care and community support sector in Ontario. VHA Home HealthCare (VHA) is a full member of OCSA.
OCSA has released its 2022 pre-budget consultation submission. In this year’s pre-budget submission, OCSA calls on the province to invest $677 million into the home and community care sector to enable Ontario’s most vulnerable to live well at home and in their communities, protect and optimize hospital and long-term care capacity and strengthen the frontline workforce. Here are some highlights from OCSA’s submission that VHA fully supports.
This investment would enable three key results:
- Ensure there is capacity to deliver home and community care services by providing $470 million to increase the salaries to home and community care frontline staff and exempting the entire community health sector from Bill 124 , including community primary care, mental health and addictions and not-for-profit long-term care.
- Prevent cuts to community support services and independent living services that would lead to more hospitalizations and early admissions to long-term care by investing $57 million in community support services base funding. Without this 5% increase, many organizations will either be in financial deficit position or be forced to cut service levels, leading to insurmountable waitlists and increases to client fees.
- Allow the clearing of the surgical backlog by ensuring the delivery of the additional home care volumes announced in the Fall Economic Statement by injecting an additional $150 million directly into the sector’s service providers. Without this 5% rate increase, providers won’t have the necessary infrastructure and operational sustainability to continue delivering services.
Home and community care services serves diverse clients of all ages, province-wide, from those with mild needs to the highest needs clients, including persons on dialysis and ventilators.