Examining the role of home care payment source on health service outcomes

Project Summary

Canadians prefer to age at home, and many rely on home care services to continue living safely in their preferred location. Home care is not an insured service under the Canada Health Act, but each province provides some degree of publicly-funded care. Despite this, Canadians have reported high levels of unmet home care needs and many pay privately for home care. Research comparing the health outcomes and health service use of individuals by source of home care payment is sparse. With demand on the home care sector set to rise steadily due to population aging and enactment of aging-in-place policies, understanding how home care payment source influences individual health and health service outcomes will provide essential evidence that can inform capacity planning and funding decisions to support adequate and equitable public home care systems.

This project will capitalize on a novel linkage between the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) and provincial health administrative data centres to examine payment for home care and related health service use outcomes in Ontario. Specifically, exploring the broad health service use of CLSA home care users in Ontario including primary care, ED visits, hospitalizations, and total public system costs, and examine how this varies by home care payment source.