Why should we be looking at home care providers with strong multi-disciplinary teams like Mosaic?

Such teams will have social work, nursing, care management, counselling and care coordination expertise. Quality care provision, especially for persons with higher care needs, cannot exist without good case management and oversight of care.

These teams assess care, develop and monitor care plans, liaise with other health care providers, over- see and support the care provided by front line workers, advocate on behalf of families, assess gaps in care and troubleshoot. Such teams will have social work, nursing, care management, counselling and care coordination expertise. Quality care provision, especially for persons with higher care needs, cannot exist without good case management and oversight of care.

A recent academic study* into “tensions experienced by case managers working in home care for older adults in Quebec” reported on issues faced by public health case managers. One of three key issues unearthed was the need to compensate for poor quality care provided by private health care provision, and a other, the lack of time that case managers had to spend with older adults because of organisational expectations and administrative tasks. Having a multi-disciplinary team, within private care providers, focused on care quality should help support public health case managers in making referrals, allowing them to spend more time on what they do best.

Another recent study** addressed this issue as “a wicked problem” especially when faced with “health system failures, including a lack of capacity and structural integration within home care programs that increase their work and workload”.

The temptation for some may be to avoid the cost of care planning and oversight, contracting directly with unsupervised caregivers operating without oversight of either public health or private care teams. Just as profes- sional case managers operating in the public sector are wary of handing care responsibility to inadequate frame- works, we at Mosaic believe that the most effective and cost-effective care is one built on experienced and knowledgeable oversight of all critical factors affecting the social, emotional and physical needs of the person. As a person centered care provider of care this extends to supporting the needs and capacities of our staff as well as our clients and families.

Companies with well-developed processes are able to deliver the necessary additional expense of quality care at a competitive price while tailoring service needs to the various capacities of the client and their families. Our website provides much more detail on our services, our expertise and our culture. Supplying persons with caregivers is only one aspect of responsible quality care provision.

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