Winnipeg/CMEDIA: Owing to a new pathway for home-care workers within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) for successfully recruiting and retaining health-care aides working in the home-care field, home-care services have shown improvement in a number of metrics, Manitoba Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Uzoma Asagwara has announced.
“To make real progress in the delivery of home care, staffing up has to be part of the plan…The WRHA…huge effort to recruit home-care workers… paying off…fewer vacancies, more visits and less…cancellations for people…appreciation to the WRHA for their hard work…to a career in health care,” said Asagwara.
Since October 2023, the WRHA home-care program has recruited 256 new health-care aides.
The new recruits have helped reduce the vacancy rate within the WRHA from 24 percent in Jan 2023 to 10.5 percent as of the end of May, a more-than fifty per cent improvement with the cancellation rate which dropped from 5.02 percent in Jan 2023 to 1.38 percent as of April.
Since Jan 2023, the increase in the number of monthly home-care visits from 384,000 to 445,000 contributed to a higher level of reliable care reducing the need for home-care clients to rely on family members or close contacts for their health-care needs, said Asagwara.
“Providing a more reliable, consistent and predictable home-care service…major priority for the Winnipeg health region…clients…safely stay in their homes as long as they can…a robust home care service is paramount to ensuring we are able to offer that support.”,” said Tara-Lee Procter, regional lead, WRHA Community and Continuing Care.
For more information about home-care services in Manitoba, visit: www.gov.mb.ca/health/homecare/index.html.
