Alberta’s Health Minister orders another review of home care

EDMONTON – After months of frustration from home care users about changes to service, the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) is stepping in.

Health Minister Fred Horne has asked the Council to conduct a review of home care in the province. Earlier this summer, he ordered Alberta Health Services to review its own decisions on home care, which saw the number of providers reduced from 45 to 17; this second review comes amidst continued complaints from clients.

The HQCA will be reviewing “the adequacy of quality assurance processes used by AHS” in delivering home care services.

Alberta Health Services says it welcomes the review, and apologizes to anyone whose service was affected during the recent transition.

“Any missed visit, or any impact on patient care whatsoever, is simply unacceptable and should never happen,” AHS President and CEO Dr. Chris Eagle said in a release Thursday. “On behalf of Alberta Health Services, I offer my apologies to any client whose care has been negatively impacted. That should not have happened, and we are doing all we can to ensure it does not happen again.”

“I think that this home care situation needs more than just an apology, it needs decisive action, and it needs to happen within a matter of weeks, not months,” said NDP Health Critic David Eggen. “We’ve seen the home care situation deteriorate from the first day that they started this ill-conceived plan.  Patients have been suffering, home care workers are leaving in droves.”

On Wednesday, the Alberta NDP called on the government to put an end to its private contract model for home care after Revera – one of the companies contracted to provide home care in the province – walked away from half of its home care contract in Edmonton.

“This PC government can’t be trusted to manage home care in the province,”Eggen said on Wednesday.

AHS acknowledges that Revera was “unable to meet its contract obligations and was missing visits,” which is “unacceptable.” AHS says the longtime home care provider is being monitored daily, and is not allowed to take on any new clients until its performance meets expectations.

“We identified a problem, and we took immediate action to fix it,” said Dr. Eagle.

AHS claims a smaller number of contracted care providers make the home care model easier to monitor; the new model is also supposed to bring a “higher, more consistent standard of care across the province.”