How does Canada's home-based care stack up against the rest of the world? Join us as we put this under the microscope with Aleem Bhanji, AlayaCare’s market leader for Canada, and Adrian Schauer, AlayaCare’s CEO. We sketch out a comprehensive picture of Canada's home health care system, highlighting the unique issues faced in provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Our guests share their insights on the potential impact of new governmental mandates and health care models while asking a critical question — what are the drivers for delivering more and better care?
If you liked this episode and want to learn more about all things home-based care, you can explore all our episodes at alayacare.com/homehealth360.
How does Canada's home-based care stack up against the rest of the world? Join us as we put this under the microscope with Aleem Bhanji, AlayaCare’s market leader for Canada, and Adrian Schauer, AlayaCare’s CEO. We sketch out a comprehensive picture of Canada's home health care system, highlighting the unique issues faced in provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Our guests share their insights on the potential impact of new governmental mandates and health care models while asking a critical question — what are the drivers for delivering more and better care?
If you liked this episode and want to learn more about all things home-based care, you can explore all our episodes at alayacare.com/homehealth360.
Welcome to Home Health 360, a podcast presented by AlayaCare. I'm your host, Jeff Howell, and this is the show about learning from the best in home health care from around the globe. Hi everyone, welcome to a special edition of Home Health 360, where we're doing a special short form format that will both be a podcast and a webinar, and it's like the Instagram stories of home health webinars. So joining me today are Aleem Bhanji, AlayaCare's market leader for Canada, and Adrian Schauer, AlayaCare's CEO. Gentlemen, in the spirit of our lightning round format, I'm going to skip the pleasantries and we'll just jump right in. Today we are talking about home-based care in the public sector and the future of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. How would you say, gentlemen, that Canada measures up to other countries?
Adrian Schauer:Yeah, thanks, Jeff. In general, I would say that Canada has a bit of catch up to do in terms of how we're delivering home-based care. There are pockets of excellence, for sure, but if you look at Canada at large, we spend about 5% of our health care budget in home-based care. In Scandinavia. You see that in the mid to high teens, France and other countries in Europe were in the 12% to 15% range. So purely just from a funding and focus point of view, I think Canada has an opportunity to catch up.
Adrian Schauer:If you look south of the border, there has been a lot of innovation in how home-based care is funded and delivered, but the access is relatively uneven. We also struggle with the labor shortage up here in Canada. I would say it's more acute in the States and a lot of the funding models, particularly in Medicaid, really struggle to pay a living wage to caregivers. In Australia, AliyahCare is also very active. We have seen an amazing shift years ago towards client-directed care. So I'd say Canada in general has some catch up to do in client-directed care, but they're also undergoing a set of reforms in Australia to their first take of how client-directed care is funded.
Aleem Bhanji:I would agree with Adrian. I think Canada has a lot of areas that we're working in parallel to what we see in other markets. I think, from a technology perspective, there are pockets around the country that are looking to start making more of a transformative investment in home and community care.
Jeff Howell:And what trends have we seen across the country in the public sector?
Aleem Bhanji:I would say there are a lot of areas that are promising, I think, three areas that I would give examples to. One is around data-driven decision-making. There's a ton of data that's being captured now thanks to electronic medical records and platforms such as Ilyacare. That captures a lot of data, but what we're seeing now is the need to be able to harness that data and move it from data to insights Not just regular insights, but it's actionable insights that can actually improve the quality of care and prevent exacerbations of care. A great example that we have seen is using data to be able to predict which clients are more likely to be hospitalized in the next 30 days. I think that data can actually transform the wraparound care services that home care agencies or health systems need to provide so that those patients can stay at home and don't need to have an unnecessary and prolonged hospitalization.
Adrian Schauer:I would say one of the trends we're seeing is increasing experimentation between what's the right model of public-private partnership for the delivery of home-based care. In provinces like Ontario you have public-funding private delivery of the majority of home-based care and then you have many other provinces where the bulk of the home care is delivered by the public sector. Of course, some years ago we saw EC shift from a largely private delivery model to a renationalization of home care services to then be delivered by the public sector. Now I think there's a shift back towards a bit of a balance between the two. It's an interesting trend, and getting that right without introducing additional overhead and duplication into the system I think it's a very interesting tension.
Adrian Schauer:As Aleem says, we've seen more and more investment in technology. In fact there's still a lot of paper out there in the delivery of home-based care, whereas in the private sector most of that doesn't exist anymore. As a software provider, it's a replacement market in the private sector, whereas in some pockets in the public sector we're seeing electronic tools at the point of care, often for the first time. The other big trend we're seeing is getting home-based care to be a more integrated part of the service delivery mix. There's an arrow of history on interoperability, but home care is often one of the last sectors of the healthcare system to be thought of. We're seeing slow but steady progress.
Jeff Howell:What's your take on the situation in Manitoba?
Aleem Bhanji:Manitoba has a new government with a new minister and a refreshed mandate, and they largely won on a healthcare file. I think there's a small window of opportunity now for Manitoba to be able to capitalize on that political mandate and really invest to be able to withstand the silver tsunami that's about to be hit with and their problems, and likely every other problems as well. So we do see a willingness for them to be able to adopt technology, but I think the next couple of years will be critical and looking at how as Adrian mentioned how can their home and community care sector be integrated fully into the continuum is going to be a critical factor I think that Manitoba has to focus on.
Adrian Schauer:A few years ago, as manitoba was looking at reforming their delivery model in home based care. We were fortunate, as a like her, to be part of a consultation as the new model was being put together and I have to say we don't see that every day. The level of curiosity, the level of innovation, the desire because we're active in all these other jurisdictions we were able to bring our general manager from Australia, used to run one of the top ten nonprofits there and in home based care delivery, and just the receptiveness to understand what had been tried with client directed care models, another jurisdictions and getting the right balance, I found super inspiring.
Jeff Howell:What's your take on the situation in Saskatchewan?
Aleem Bhanji:I think similarly. I think there's a large push over the next year or two to be able to invest in seniors care. We're hearing good signs from Saskatchewan to have investments in delivering care services that are as close to home as possible. We agree with that philosophy, and making sure that we know that bricks and mortar can't scale we're sure that we can have wraparound care and the technology enablers underneath them. To be able to deliver care in the home is a positive trend that we've seen and it's something that we don't always hear about as loudly in other provinces. It's refreshing to hear.
Adrian Schauer:I would add in terms of the quadruple aim, there's a big focus on the care worker or the frontline caregiving staff and the fact that there's a recognition that if the sector is gonna thrive and deal with the supply demand issues that really we see everywhere in the world that we do business, there has to be a focus on delivering delightful experience to the caregiver, using technology to do that and also really focus on how much time can be spent in direct care and not an administrative tasks.
Jeff Howell:The war on repetitive tasks. I've seen some data recently on just how much clinicians are spent how much time they like a third of their day is spent dealing with the technology, and it's not on value add, it's really just on administrative tasks. What are some mistakes governments making in their decisions around home care delivery?
Adrian Schauer:For me, I would say, a lot of this is around how unique A particular public health authority believes they are in terms of the delivery of care, and where you invent the things that are truly unique to your jurisdiction and where you can piggyback and other jurisdictions, and what patterns and technologies and workflows have been honed through the catalyst of trying to deliver great care everywhere in the world in other contexts. So I would say getting that balance right is very important so that we don't waste resources reinventing the wheel.
Aleem Bhanji:We're seeing certain governments around the country trying to leverage tools that are not necessarily meant to be designed or developed for home care, and so they're using those because they may be available from another project and they're trying to bootstrap it onto a home care context, and we see that they're trying to over customize or trying to put a square peg in a round hole, so to speak, and it's just it's not yielding positive results. And so I think, really making sure that when you're making those investments, you're doing so with the right framing and you want to do it once, you want to do it right and you want to see the outcomes and I think that's a critical miss for some provinces that I think can be avoided.
Jeff Howell:Gentlemen, true to our snack size format, I'll get you out of here. On one last question what are the drivers for delivering more and better care?
Adrian Schauer:I think the first thing we have to take care of is making sure we've got the capacity in the system, and so that means delightful experience for the frontline clinicians and care workers. I think it means making sure we reduce administrative overhead so as we go from the assessment to developing the right care, the right sized care plan, to get to the outcomes, measuring all those outcomes and then making sure we're just very streamlined in our operations. I think that is really the key to ensuring the dollars we put into this sector lead to better patient outcomes.
Aleem Bhanji:Yeah, I would agree. I think making sure we do more with the same is absolutely a critical piece. I think the other one is really around making sure that for the select population that's extremely medically complex, we're developing the capabilities of sharing data so that clinicians have the right data at the right time in the right place, and home and community care needs to mature, I think, in that space to be able to be a true partner to primary care, to acute care and others. That's definitely something that we see as something that needs to be done to deliver better and higher quality care.
Adrian Schauer:Yeah, I think the real tension to get right is to be data driven and metric driven, but then also allow a very human context for the delivery of care. We're talking about care in patients' homes, and getting that right is very important there you have it.
Jeff Howell:What an exciting time for change on the horizon for public health authorities. I certainly have seen a lot more change in the last year than in the previous five years combined. Gentlemen, thank you for spending the time today and let's all cheer out over your province to be on the right side of history. Home Health 360 is presented by AlayaCare. First off, we want to thank our amazing guests and listeners. To get more episodes, you can go to alayacarecom forward slash home health 360. That's spelled home health 360, or search Home Health 360 on any of your favorite podcasting platforms. The easiest way to stay up to date on our new shows is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a newsletter you can sign up for on alayacarecom forward slash home health 360 to get alerts for new shows and more valuable content from AlayaCare Right into your inbox. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.