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Access to therapies the focus of controversy

March 25, 2010

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The waterloo lvellington Community Care Access Centre says it's doing the best it can to maintain therapy volumes in the face of provincially-nrandated changes last fall focusing on those who need services the most arnid ongoing health-care reform.

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There's been uncertainty among health-care providers like occupational therapists and physiotherapists since the fall, including speculation the region's access centre has reduced therapies recently to slash a projected budget shortfall by the end of its fiscal year on March 31.

Interim chief executive Kelly Smith said that isn't the case at all. Instead, Queen's Park last September tightened the criteria for eligibility for home care professional services, so the focus more on higher-need clients.
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that information at the time with the agencies," Smith said, adding this may not have trickled down to some of the therapists, and that may be the root of the confusion.
But Ontario Physiotherapy Association chieF executive Dorianne Sauve said the upshot is people aren't getting the services they once did in the province, a legitimate concern. "\rye're having issues with gaps in the systern and people are falling through," Sauve said. To Smith, it's not a budget issue. It's almost $loo-million annual budget faced a potential $1.7million deficit, it noted only a few months ago. But since then, it's cut that to a fraction through improvements like new administrative efficiencies and staff attrition and retirements in what it termed a "fine tuning" of operations. The CCAC noted therapy vislts are down, but pointed to provincial criterion changes for eligibility. In the nine-month period ending lanuary, there were 83,000 visits, down eight per cent from the same period a year earlier, the access centre reported. But in a direct improvement, the access centre reported it was able to decrease wait times by 83 per cent, to 79 people r{aiting for a therapist as of March 14, compared to 471 the previous fiscal year. Sauve took issue with the regulatory changes last fall that have rnade it tougher for people to get therapies. "There is definitely more restrictions on therapy than there have been in the past," Sauve said, reasoning that can't help but make it tougher for access centres across the province to provide what people need. "There's iess budget left.at the end oFthe fiscal year," Sauve coilcluded.

It cornes, she said, at a time when hospitals, which used to provide therapies, are discharging
patients sooner and cutting such outpatient services. That places the onus on community services to pick up the ball as people are eased back into their homes.

"I the past, horne care would be more of a bridge," Sauve said.
But that's no longer the norm as access centres concentrate, as required by Queen's Park, on priority patients, she said.

http ://news. guelphmercury.com/News/article I 613 030

26t03t2010