Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights

“Standing up for You”

Summary - November 4, 2016

Blue Paper Initiative - 2016 - Home Care - An Essential Need

This Blue Paper initiative (2016) illustrates the important elements that require the
government’s immediate attention on home care for seniors. It is not meant to eliminate or
restrict other services that are required to ensure that the aging population lives with
respect and dignity.

An effective continuum of care requires strong community support. Appropriate services

must be accessible when and where they are needed to ensure the best quality of life for
people with varying degrees of short and long-term illness or disability.

The province needs to invest in and develop a set of well thought-out and well-defined
policies which will give direction to the issue both for long-term as well as short-term
solutions. A clear vision which focused on the realities of a fast growing and aging
population.

Appropriate services must be accessible when and where they are needed to ensure the best
quality of life for people with varying degrees of short and long-term illness or disability.

New Brunswick has an aging population at 19% (2015) with numbers increasing. It is also
the highest across the country.

Keeping seniors in the hospital is wasteful because the cost in acute-care hospital bed is
significantly higher than in the community. This impacts the availability of hospital beds
and disrupts urgent acute-care services. Without a publicly-funded home care program,
under the auspices of the Department of Health, the cost to taxpayers and the challenges
will continue.

In all other provinces, continuum of care (home care and long term care) is the
responsibility of health care, whereby the federal transfer money is allocated to provinces
based on the criteria of the Canada Health Act.

The Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights strongly recommends:

1. That the Department of Health be vested with the responsibility for the delivery of
Home Care services through proper expenditure of public funds, governing, planning,
managing, monitoring, evaluating with well-defined standards, guidelines and audits.

2. That the New Brunswick government develop a concise and easily understandable
“Guide” such as “Your Guide to Home Care Service in Manitoba” as found in this
province’s guide for home care services .
http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/homecare/index.html
Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights
“Standing Up for You “-
Blue Paper Initiative 2016 - Home Care