Go figure it? Our provincial government’s health portfolio is now led by a community-minded Minister whose previous portfolio was poverty reduction and children.

And yet, we were recently notified by this government that ER wait-time reductions are the primary result of hospitals’ fine work. Further, these results are now being tied to hospitals’ funding. The reduction in ER wait-times are being rewarded by an increased cashflow by the government. But only to hospitals.

ER wait-time reduction is without a doubt connected to the strength of community support services. There’s no such thing as a star quarterback without a supporting team. Enough said.

Our hospitals can’t reduce their wait-times without the fine work and continually emerging innovations within the community support services sector — supportive housing for seniors, mental health and addiction services, visiting homecare nursing, respite care, and the list goes on and on. Without these community resources, Ontario’s ERs will be on their own. Anyone care to guess what will happen to ER wait-times in the absence of community resources? The same thing that would happen to a quarterback without a team. Crushed.

The re-allocation of resources in the health care system requires that a government have wisdom and courage to reward good results everywhere, not just in hospitals. Community support services don’t simply reduce waittimes by caring for people in their homes; they help prevent ER admission in the first place, they speed up discharges and they promote innovation and integration across health providers. They are efficient, effective and often do hospital work at a fraction of hospital costs. But despite all of this, they get over-looked. The Ministry of Health’s recent announcement that hospitals are being rewarded for their success in reducing ER waiting list is a good example of this myopic view of health care.

Without community services, the backlog in ERs and in acute care beds will make our present challenges appear like small problems. The time is overdue to also invest in community services’ results and innovations. The community services sector needs to be given real consideration, not occasional platitudes for being supportive of our hospitals’ challenges. Go figure it; why is this Minister not taking up the cause of community support services that are indispensable in meeting the community’s health service needs?

Monty Laskin

Executive Director Caledon Community

Services