Business View - June 2015 109
home care system in Ontario, service provision is
based on a private sector delivery model where the
corporate status of service provider agencies is varied.
There have been many successes and today the gov-
ernment funded home care system is responsible for
providing almost 38 million visit/hours of high quality
care at home to close to 700,000 Ontarians per year.
As the largest home care program in Canada, Ontario
leads the way in building a system driven by quality
and evaluated on several dimensions.
In Ontario, the publicly funded home care program is lo-
cally administered by 14 Community Care Access Cen-
tres (CCACs) across the province. CCACs are account-
able to the Local Health Integrated Networks (LHINs),
regional organizations responsible for local health sys-
tem planning, community engagement and funding a
wide range of health service providers. CCACs serve
to provide a simplified service access point and are
responsible for determining eligibility for, and buying
on behalf of consumers, the highest quality, and best
priced visiting professional and homemaker services
provided at home and in publicly-funded schools.
CCACs also provide information and referral to the
public on community-related services and authorize
admissions to long-term care homes.
Family’s Role
Publicly funded home care services are designed to
complement and supplement, but not replace, the
efforts of individuals to care for themselves with the
assistance of family, friends and community. A funda-
mental component of home care is that family and/
or friends will provide care to supplement the publicly
funded service.
Home Care Ontario estimates that 150,000 Ontarians
purchase an additional 20 million visit/hours of home
care services annually in order to remain at home. The
purchase of private home care services allows indi-
viduals to remain at home surrounded by family and
friends, and helps them to continue to contribute to
HEALTHCARE
