October 31, 2022
Time for the Province to Properly Fund Hospices and Palliative Care
This morning during question period MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) asked the Ford government why Ontario Hospices continue to struggle to access proper government funding.
“Members of Hospice Palliative Care Ontario are at Queen’s Park today. Their message is really clear: Annualized operating funding increases are needed now to prevent the collapse of the lower cost, highly valued hospice sector. Does the Premier thing that palliative care patients should go grocery shopping, cook their own food, wash their own dishes? Does he think that they should change their own bed and do their own laundry? Does he think that they should clean their room, wash the floor, take their trash to the curb? Does he think that palliative care patients should pay for heat, hydro, telephone, cable, Internet? I don’t. Why is it that the Premier does not fund any of these basic services in Ontario hospices?’’ Gélinas asked.
Hospice and Palliative Care Ontario’s recent user survey found that more than half of family caregivers reported that hospice volunteer support helped avert a trip to the ER saving the system $10,000,000 in unnecessary ER visits.
“The government funds 50% of the operating cost of our hospices. The community funding model that the hospices depend on is broken. The words “hospice palliative care” are nowhere in the last budget that this government tabled. The reality is that the costs continue to escalate while community donation power is challenged by economic realities, including the pandemic. Hospices are not only a pressure valve for emergency room crises, but they’re an access point for grief, for bereavement, for mental health services. Members of Hospice Palliative Care are here to remind us that hospice palliative care means system savings and efficiencies. It means improved patient care and caregiver experience.
Nobody should spend their last day alive washing dishes. Can your government commit today to funding hospices to a minimum of 70% of their operating costs?”
In the last five years, 23,000 people in Ontario were discharged from hospital or bypassed hospital going to a hospice residence according to Hospice and Palliative Care Ontario.