New Directions for Facility-Based Long Term Care, 2009

The goal of this brief from the Canadian Healthcare Association (CHA) is to put facility-based long term care on the Canadian health care policy agenda.

The brief highlights the need to achieve the appropriate balance of health services through a variety of means, including:

• matching the health service setting to the health condition;
• not overestimating, but considering carefully, the amount of caregiving that can be reasonably assumed by informal (unpaid) caregivers.

The brief covers:

• the need to reinforce CHA’s ongoing commitment to enhance appropriate facility-based long term care, which should form part of a broad continuum of publicly-funded health services across Canada
• a description of facility-based long term care sector across Canada by providing a national definition of facility-based long term care, and by highlighting broad equivalencies between the provinces and territories;
• the identification of facility-based long term care throughout the country
• the need to offer health services in the setting that is most cost-efficient and care-effective for each individual situation; and
• the need to avert the premature admission to facility-based long term care of individuals who could move to
• supportive/assisted living arrangements (or remain in their own home) with the support of quality-driven home and community services.

http://www.cha.ca/documents/CHA_LTC_9-22-09_eng.pdf