Last week highly witnessed the unleashing of the highly published Drummond Report. The report proposed fixes, slight & drastic alike, relating to Ontario’s budget.

In a nutshell, Drummond recommends cutting spending and increasing inflows were possible (parking fees at Go Train’s, lessening tax credits in certain sectors, etc).

Health Care was a major component of the report. The report recommends cutting spending within hospital settings, shifting some of the expense of caring for certain sectors of the population by increasing the usage & powers of LHIN’s (Local Health Integration Networks) and private health care providers. Drummond wishes to cut back on Doctor expenses, using more Nurse Practitioners to provide & coordinate care. From the report:

The LHINs should optimize human resources capacity by shifting services to lower-cost caregivers where feasible and encouraging full scope of practice ? a net shift in responsibilities from physicians to nurses and others in health teams, including physician assistants. The LHINs should use funding as a lever to ensure that nurses, nurse practitioners, personal support workers and other staff members can apply their full range of skills.

PSW Related

Personal support workers fit into Drummond’s vision of a lower cost health care system. Here is the reports recommendation for the usage of psws:

Recommendation 5-22: Increase the use of personal support workers and integrate them into teams with nurse practitioners, registered nurses and other staff members where appropriate to optimize patient care.

LHIN’s are set to gain from this proposed shift. The St. Thomas Times-Journal conducted an interview with an Ontario LHIN CEO, Michael Barrett. Barrett said the following about the report:

“Higher quality is going to be at a cheaper cost to the system. That’s really at the heart of Mr. Drummond’s recommendations, that it’s not about cutting services, it’s about improving quality care because quality care is going to be less expensive care.”

It’s important to remember that the Drummond report was simply that: a report. The jury is still out of which changes, if any, are to be implemented. But it’s clear that the wind is blowing towards a lessening of Health Care expenses as a percentage of the overall budget in Ontario. As it currently stands, the personal support worker profession is one of the few to potentially gain from any upcoming governmental policy changes.