I am pleased to share our first Continuing Care Access and Flow bulletin.
We want to inform and educate about the trends and demand for continuing care programs and services in the province. In this edition, we look at Quarter 4 (Q4) data from January 1–March 31, 2019, full fiscal year (FY) data for 2018-19 and data from 2015 to 2019.
We hope you will find this information helpful and we welcome any and all feedback.
Susan Stevens
Senior Director, Continuing Care, NSHA
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Continuing Care Referrals
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In this section we report on the total number of referrals for home care, long-term care and other continuing care programs. Referrals are most often received through our
intake line: 1-800-225-7225
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Measurement:
- Data includes number of referrals to all 17 continuing care programs and services, such as home care, long-term care, caregiver benefit, health equipment loan program, home oxygen, etc.
Summary:
- Over 22,000 referrals were made to continuing care in FY 2018-19.
- Referrals increased by 6.7 per cent since FY 2015-16. Referral growth in Western Zone and Central Zone drove this increase.
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Home Care
NSHA’s Home First philosophy promotes safe and timely care, services and supports to help people live in the place they call home for as long as possible.
Home Care is an important part of our Home First approach and includes
Home Support
and
Nursing services
.
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Home Support
services
include personal care, respite, meal preparation and essential housekeeping delivered by c
ontinuing care assistants
.
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Measurement:
- The wait list is comprised of new/existing clients authorized to receive home support services that are not yet in place.
- The number of number of people waiting for some or all of their home support services to be initiated.
- The number of outstanding hours per week for all clients on the wait list.
- When in a wait list situation, we prioritize services for people discharged from hospital and people at the end of life.
Summary:
- Clients in Central Zone and Western Zone make up 67 per cent of all the wait list clients.
- Even though Western Zone has the highest amount of wait list hours, it has the lowest hours per client when compared to other zones. An average of 4.3 hours/week per client.
- Central Zone has the highest average hours per client of 6.6 hours/week per client.
- The majority of clients in Central Zone already receive partial services and are waiting for the rest of their home support services to begin while the majority of clients in Western Zone are waiting for all of their home support services to be initiated.
- Both the number of clients waiting and number of hours on the wait list decreased significantly since March 31, 2015.
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Nursing Services
include short term and long-term nursing care by RNs and LPNs in a person’s home including but not limited to, IV therapy, nursing assessment, pain management, and wound care.
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Measurement:
- VON provides 94 per cent of the home care nursing services in the province while NSHA provides six per cent.
- VON and NSHA issue capacity alerts when their ability to accept new referrals is in question. In these situations, referrals are considered and prioritized on a case by case basis.
- Total refers to the total number of nursing capacity alerts issued by both NSHA and VON.
Summary
- NSHA issued the majority of alerts in Eastern Zone and Central Zone during January-March 2019.
- In FY 2018-19, a total of 422 capacity alerts were issued by both NSHA and VON.
- Q4 had the lowest quarter of nursing alerts, particularly for VON Alerts.
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Measurement:
- Nursing services refers to clients authorized to receive nursing services.
- Home support refers to clients authorized to receive home support.
- Combined services refers to clients authorized to receive both home support and nursing services.
- Not all clients authorized to receive home care, receive it immediately due to to wait list times for services, hospitalizations, etc.
Summary:
- 30,711 people were authorized to receive home care services in FY 2018-19, up by 3.4 per cent from previous year FY 2017-18.
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Long-term Care
When all home and community resources have been explored and a person’s needs can no longer be met at home, placement to a Department of Health & Wellness (DHW) licensed long-term care (LTC) facility may be considered.
LTC includes both
Nursing Home (NH)
and
Residential Care Facility (RCF).
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Measurement:
- Community refers to the number of clients waiting in community who completed the wait list registration process and are waiting at home for placement to LTC.
- Hospital refers to the number of clients waiting in hospital who completed the wait list registration process and are waiting in hospital for placement to LTC.
- These numbers include people waiting for their initial placement to a NH or RCF. The vast majority of people are waiting for NH placement.
- Clients are assigned to a zone based on the location of their preferred community to be placed in.
- These wait lists do not include transfers (transfer refers to clients waiting to move from their current LTC facility to another LTC facility) or clients in the process of wait list registration.
Summary:
- There are currently, 135 LTC facilities: 6,923 nursing home beds and 927 residential care facility beds.
- 1,156 clients are waiting in both hospital and from home for initial placement in a LTC facility.
- 40 per cent of people on the wait list are waiting for a placement in Central Zone, 28 per cent waiting for placement in Eastern Zone and with approximately 20 per cent waiting for placement in Northern and Western Zones.
- Approximately 80 per cent of clients waiting for LTC are waiting at home.
- 86 per cent of people are waiting for NH versus 14 per cent waiting for RCF.
- The DHW reports information about the LTC wait list (number of people) and wait times (number of days) quarterly, on the Nova Scotia Wait Times website. You can find both the wait list and wait times for Residential Care Facility Placement (from home) and Nursing Home Placement (from home).
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Long-term care placement numbers show the people who accepted a bed offer in a nursing home (NH) or residential care facility (RCF).
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Measurement:
- Community refers to the number of people who moved into LTC homes from home.
- Hospital refers to the number of people who moved into LTC homes from the hospital.
- Total refers to the total number of people across the province placed in LTC facilities.
- Clients transferred from one LTC facility to another were not included.
Summary:
- Notably, Central Zone due to the large number of beds, continues to have the majority of placements, with approximately 33 per cent of all placements across the province. Moreover, both Eastern and Northern Zones compose approximately 20 per cent of all placements each.
- Initial placement in a LTC facility increased by 6.6 per cent since FY 2015-16.
- Provincially, 44 per cent of all initial placements into LTC were from hospital and 56 per cent from home.
- Placements into LTC facilities from hospital increased in Q3 & Q4.
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Please send feedback to:
Jaimee Dobson, Communications Advisor,
Continuing Care
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