The North East Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) has been through major transitions in the past, and its CEO does not expect the next transition – which would effectively dissolve the organization and transfer its responsibilities to the North East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) – to be much different.
On June 2, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins tabled the Patients First Act, a piece of legislation that intends to transform the province's health-care system.
One of those transformations would be to transfer responsibility for home care from Ontario's 14 CCACs to the 14 LHINs.
The provincial government said in a press release the changes would improve access to primary care for patients and improve local connections and communication between primary health care, hospitals, and home and community care to ensure more equitable access.
“We want to reassure patients that at the patient level, it is business as usual,” said North East CCAC CEO Richard Joly. “We've done this in the past. I was here 10 years ago when we transitioned from seven CCACs to one.”
Joly said the day that transition happened home care services for patients continued as normal.
The big changes, he said, happened in the background over several months as the organization identified redundancies and combined the resources from seven smaller organizations into one larger body.
Joly spoke with Sudbury.com prior to what would likely be the North East CCAC's final annual general meeting.
He and his colleagues expect province to pass the Patients First Act in the fall.
Because the North East LHIN is a smaller organization than the North East CCAC, at least in terms of staffing, Joly said he expects job losses to be minimal after the transition, since staff will still be needed to run the various programs.
Health Minister Hoskins has already said he expects frontline staff to transition from one organization to the other without much issue, but added there could be “significant savings” from disbanding the CCACs and transferring their responsibilities to the LHINs instead.
Joly said the North East CCAC's current programs – which are all funded and approved with the North East LHIN – will all transfer over to the new entity.
In his address during the annual general meeting, North East CCAC board chair Ron Farrell highlighted many of the positive changes to home care in northeastern Ontario during the past decade.
Farrell said the Telehomecare Network, for example, has helped patients connect with health-care providers without leaving their communities.
