Going once, going twice... Health care giants bid for home care

 Cashing in on need

 Ontario: Primed for costly privatization

 The cost of competition

 Staffing problems

 Out of pocket expenses on rise

 Funding and access cutbacks

 Home care is about women

 The need for federal action

 For-profit home care provision: expanding the market

 Olsten’s shoddy track record

 What is your province doing?

 Corporate classrooms costly...

A Home and Community Care Act would:

• Enshrine the principles of comprehensive, universal, portable and accessible care that is publicly administered.
• Ensure the program covers home care services such as professional services (nursing and therapy), home support (homemaking, personal care, housekeeping, transportation), respite care, meal programs, home maintenance, medical equipment and supplies, counselling and medical support. Both maintenance and preventive services would be covered.
• Establish a continuum of care from acute care to community care and long-term care. Hospitals would be integrally linked into the provision of home care.
• Establish national standards for home care. Standards would be uniform across regions and provinces.
• Ensure that home care services are publicly administered and publicly accountable. Trained public sector employees would deliver home care services.
• Ensure stable financing of home care through federal-provincial cost sharing.

Ontario: Primed for costly privatization

Ontario Premier Mike Harris has set the stage for the all-out privatization of community and home care with a destructive "competitive bidding" process that has transformed Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) into profit centres for private home care companies. Private for-profit providers use low paid non-union labour to underbid and gain entry into the $1 billion a year Ontario home care market. Patients and workers are the casualties because the bidding wars drive non-profit providers to seek concessions from their workers and consider service cutbacks in order to remain ‘competitive.’

Nowhere is this clearer than Windsor, Ontario. In July ‘99 the not-for-profit Victorian Order of Nurses, which had served the community for over 70 years, lost its home care contract to three firms, including for-profit providers Olsten and Comcare. The decision took place behind closed doors without consulting home care users, doctors or other community members. The tendering process didn’t take into account the bidder’s track record elsewhere, ignoring the fact that Olsten has been convicted of fraud and fined US$61 million.

The Windsor decision, which cost 226 VON nurses their jobs, sparked a community uproar. More than 1,700 patients and families lost the continuity of care which had allowed the VON nurses to become trusted helpers in their daily lives. Home care providers employed by a for-profit agency will face constant pressure to rush from visit to visit, depriving patients of the care and attention they depend on. Windsor General Hospital’s chief of staff says he is "very, very frightened" about the consequences of carving up the city’s home care.