A town hall meeting will be hosted in Edmonton Sunday evening to discuss changes to home-care services in the Capital region.
The meeting, hosted by advocacy organization Friends of Medicare, will address decisions made earlier this month by Alberta Health Services (AHS) to amalgamate 72 home-care providers to 13, in order to save $18 million.
People who use these services – seniors and people with disabilities – have raised concerns about how their care will be impacted if services are no longer provided by local agencies, but for-profit corporations instead.
“Our concern is that we still don't have any public knowledge about what those contracts are all about and how they're going to be impacting direct patient care,” said Sandra Azocar, executive director of Friends of Medicare Edmonton.
So far AHS has renewed contracts with two Toronto-based corporations, CBI Health and Bayshore. The two contracts total $371 million. There are 13 remaining agencies to be named.
Azocar explained at least one of the agencies that was awarded a home-care contract has advised workers that under the new contact, 10-minutes of direct patient care will now be used for “travel time.”
“These changes mean that workers will have to leave earlier than their allotted direct patient care time or stay and work for free,” said Azocar. “Either way, these cuts will be on the backs of patients, front line staff, or both.”
On Tuesday, AHS reversed their decision to replace home-care services in three Edmonton housing co-operatives. They admitted to not paying enough attention to the concerns of those affected.
“It's a flip flop,” said Dick Tansey of Seniors United Now in St. Albert. “We don’t know what (these changes) mean in the long run because the government isn't revealing a lot of detail.”
Tansey said home care is high on the organization’s agenda and encourages concerned residents to attend the town hall Sunday night.
The meeting will be held Sunday, June 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ironworkers Local 720 Hall, 10512 122 St. NW Edmonton. Speakers will include NDP MLA David Eggen, Noel Somerville of the Seniors Task Force and Wildrose MLA Kerry Towle.
