Opposition parties urge more funding for home-care services
Alberta opposition parties are calling on Health Minister Fred Horne to boost funding for home care as Alberta Health Services struggles to stay within its $500-million budget.
“He needs to find the money to make sure the budget is adequate to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens,” NDP Leader Brian Mason said Tuesday.
“He should make this a really important priority as it comes right before Christmas. This could be a Christmas present for people who really need some help.”
The NDP revealed Monday that AHS is cutting the hours for some patients receiving home care, which the party says is linked to a government effort to deal with a projected $3-billion deficit.
On Tuesday, Mason released an AHS internal memo that he says backs up the NDP’s claim. The Nov. 22 memo, from the director of the home living program in the Edmonton zone, includes a chart showing expected cost savings of about $1.6 million by reducing the time allotted for certain bundles of home-care services.
“We cannot allow cuts to health care, which are cuts to our most vulnerable, to help balance the budget. These people are not responsible for the financial position our government has put us in,” Mason said.
However, AHS has said they are not cutting homecare spending, but rather are trying to keep to the original $500-million budget.
Marianne Stewart, vicepresident of community and mental health for the Edmonton zone, said the hospitals have been doing a good job of getting patients out of acute care beds and back to their homes more quickly. However, this has created a huge growth in demand for home care, which is going over budget.
The $1.6 million identified in the memo “is money I don’t have,” Stewart said. “We weren’t as diligent at watching how our (home-care) costs escalated.”
She said AHS is attempting to deal with the problem not by cutting services, but by asking home-care operators to provide the same services in less time, if possible.
Patients receiving home care that takes an hour or less will see no reductions in time. Patients whose services take between an hour and 3.75 hours are being targeted for a reduction of 15 minutes, though any decrease can be appealed, Stewart said.
The memo makes clear that AHS is getting more serious about staying on budget.
It goes on to say that all new support services will be approved “only within specified limits” and that case managers have been asked to look for “additional service adjustments” by reviewing all their clients. Stewart acknowledged the time reductions may be difficult for some home-care operators.
“They would know they have been able to charge for two hours, when their very efficient and good providers are in there for an hour,” she said. “They are not doing anything illegal. They can charge us that. But our good, big providers understand we are all about serving more. It’s not like their business is going to go away.”
Horne was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but press secretary Bart Johnson noted home-care funding has already increased $95 million over the last two years.
Wildrose critic Kerry Towle said her party is all for fiscal discipline, but the home-care budget isn’t the right place to start. She said cuts should be made to a bloated health bureaucracy rather than patient care.
She said she was disturbed by a section of the memo, which says that AHS has “provided a script” for case managers to use when talking with clients about the time reductions.