A wage increase and a scheduling overhaul for personal support workers in the home-care industry would be a good start and would go a long way in ending hallway health care, said the executive director of Home Care Ontario.
Wages for PSWs who provide care for patients at home have been stagnant for a decade, said Sue VanderBent, who leads Home Care Ontario, which represents more than 50 home-care organizations across the province. Currently, PSWs working in the home-care field earn between $16.50/hour to $19/hour.
“We know that we are not competitive with hospitals or long-term care,” said VanderBent. “A lot of PSWs are drawn to home care, because it's less institutionalized than hospitals and LTC environments, but they gravitate towards hospitals and LTC homes because of the wage differences.”
PSWs are also choosing to work in other fields, such as retail or the service industry, because they have families to support, VanderBent said.
That's why Home Care Ontario, in its pre-budget submissions, is asking the province to increase wages five per cent per year for three years, VanderBent said.
“That will just get us to a competitive point so we can bring staff back,” she said. “I've known many PSWs who don't want to work in retail. They want to work as a PSW, and it's really terrible to think they can't work in home care any more, because they can't manage their household with the wages they make.”
Home Care Ontario is working with the province toward the end.
“I really do think the province and the minister of health are very aware of the issues we face in home care,” VanderBent said. “I think Minister of Health Christine Elliott understands that home care is the answer to hallway health care.”
Getting the care they need at home will stop people from going to the emergency room whenever they are in distress or frightened.
“We would like to make a better home care system so we have the ability to put care in,” VanderBent said.
The province is looking at removing service maximums, she said, which means the home-care organizations could bump up care for someone who might need a few extra hours to help them stay at home.
“That would be a huge step forward,” said VanderBent.
“It's tough work, and we're lucky to have people who do this work,” she said. “PSWs are a very valuable class of workers, because they have very transferable skills.
There are upwards of 100,000 people working as PSWs in Ontario, in home care, in hospitals and in LTC homes, VanderBent said.
“If we could give home-care workers eight solid hours of work, that would be terrific,” she said. “We would also want to expand the hours of work, so PSWs could work day shifts and afternoon shifts. It's such a dream to me to think we could actually achieve full employment for all of our PSWs, but it would be such a terrific thing”
Currently, it's difficult for PSWs to build a life around a schedule where they work a few hours in the morning, then have an extended break until their next client sometime in the afternoon, VanderBent said.
“This is why we want to stabilize work schedules, as well as income,” she said. “We want to bring it to a point where home care workers feel they are competitive with their peers in hospitals and LTC homes.”
This “transformation agenda” won't happen overnight, she said. It will take time to move away from the silos to a more integrated and localized system.”
“As a health system leader and clinician myself, the most difficult part will be getting used to a new pathway, but then it will just accelerate from there, and it will probably take three to four years for it to be fully realized.
“I think everyone in the health-care system is really understanding the critical role of keeping people at home. That's where (patients) want to be. We have a lot of things we have to correct, and these changes will go a long way in getting our staff eager to come back and ultimately ending hallway medicine.”
