For decades, Ontario’s health-care system has been focused on hospital care. As far back as 2012, with the release of ECCO 1.0, RNAO called for Ontario to refocus its attention from hospital care to much-needed and strengthened community care. RNAO continues to sound the alarm on the need to put more resources into primary care, home and community care to decrease the number of patients in hospital.
In June 2020, RNAO provided feedback on the government’s efforts to reform the home and community care sector. Bill 175: Connecting People to Home and Community Care Act, 2020 repeals the 1994 legislative framework and integrates home and community care with the rest of the health system under Ontario Health. The 16 recommendations outlined in RNAO’s submission are essential to realize the improvements needed in the home care sector.
RNAO continues to urge Ontario’s deputy minister of health to transition nursing human resources from the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) into interprofessional primary care teams and consider all of the elements of RNAO’s Enhancing Community Care for Ontarians (ECCO) model.
RNAO released ECCO 3.0 in May 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic and ongoing health system transformation. Since ECCO 1.0 was released in 2012, RNAO has consistently fought for an accessible, equitable, person-centred and publicly-funded health system
Other policy documents related to health system transformation:
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