After announcing today that they will be ceasing operations in Alberta, home care provider Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) have demonstrated yet again why experiments in private care must be ceased.
"This is now twice since 2013 AHS has lost a contract for home care services," said Friends of Medicare Executive Director Sandra Azocar. "Home care should not be subject to the pressures of a competitive market. It's clear that instead of a race to the top for quality care, we have a race to the bottom to slash costs which squeezes out not-for-profit groups like VON."
After announcing today that they will be ceasing operations in Alberta, home care provider Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) have demonstrated yet again why experiments in private care must be ceased.
"This is now twice since 2013 AHS has lost a contract for home care services," said Friends of Medicare Executive Director Sandra Azocar. "Home care should not be subject to the pressures of a competitive market. It's clear that instead of a race to the top for quality care, we have a race to the bottom to slash costs which squeezes out not-for-profit groups like VON."
After Alberta Health Services disastrous restructuring of home care service providers in the Edmonton and Calgary regions in 2013, Revera had backed away from providing one half of its contracted services in the Edmonton region.
"Faced with similar situations in the past, the NDP had called for delivering home care publicly, and we agree with that position. This experiment in privatization has led to inadequate care hours, bottom level wages, high staff turnover, and a lack of proper training. Stability, proper oversight, regulations, and funding under our public system is needed," said Azocar.
In response to the previous government home care restructuring, then NDP health critic David Eggen said on October 9, 2013 "This whole thing has been chaos. The government needs to reverse it now and start delivering home care publicly."
"We are calling on the Government today to enact a review of our home care system, to provide adequate funding, and ultimately transition to a comprehensive, universal and publicly delivered system to avoid these types of situations in the future," added Azocar.