Today, Canada’s Minister of Health, Hon. Mark Holland, B.C.’s Minister of Health, Hon. Adrian Dix, and Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ Services and Long-Term Care, MLA Harwinder Sandhu, announced a bilateral agreement to invest $733 million over the next five years to help British Columbians age with dignity, closer to home, through improved access to home and community care and long-term care.
“The Association welcomes this important announcement,” says BC Care Providers Association and EngAge BC CEO, Terry Lake, “this agreement is crucial progress in ensuring that every senior in the province receives the dignity, safety, best quality of care and quality of life as they age.”
Federal funding will support B.C.’s five-year action plan to improve health care for seniors. The plan will:
- Expand home and community care services
- Continue to expand and integrate home and community care services for seniors with complex medical conditions and frailty to better meet their needs and help reduce pressures on hospitals and emergency departments.
- Improve the availability of palliative and end-of-life care
- Increase access to palliative and end of life care for people outside hospital settings, enabling them to have these supports in their home, hospice, or community settings.
- Improve the quality of long-term care services
- Improve dementia care through implementation of evidence practice knowledge, standardized education, and monitoring tools.
- Strengthen the appropriateness, safety, and quality of LTC by enabling consistent, appropriate standards of care and oversight of LTC services.
- Support aging in place through connecting frail seniors in their homes to a new outreach program through long-term care providing supports, services and respite care.
- Support the delivery of excellent long-term care through improved long-term care experience for residents, by hiring and training diverse, skilled staff, and enhancing working conditions in LTC homes.
In the press conference, Hon. Dix commented on the Ministry’s partnership with BCCPA and the collaboration with his predecessor, Terry Lake, in making progress in addressing health human resources challenges.
“This funding will help address many long-standing issues that our sector has been facing,” says Lake. “The Association thanks Minister Holland, Minister Dix and Parliamentary Secretary Harwinder Sandhu for their continuous support of seniors living in long-term care across the province.”
Click here to see the Government of Canada’s official news release.
