Investing in Home Care Staff to Reduce ER Wait Times and Boost Surgical Capacity
Across Ontario, the healthcare system is under immense strain, with unpaid caregivers making approximately 1.9 million emergency room visits annually just to get a brief respite. These visits cost the province over $600 million each year and exacerbate the growing pressures hospitals face from an aging population that is increasingly prone to illness.
Today, many Ontarians experience significant delays in accessing the healthcare they urgently need. Simultaneously, Ontario’s Minister of Finance has declared that the current rate of health care spending is unsustainable, emphasizing that innovation is essential to keep the system functional.
The Solution: Expanding Home Care Services
The answer to this crisis is clear: we must alleviate pressure on hospitals by delivering more care in the most cost-effective setting—at home. Recent findings from Deloitte Canada reveal that increased government investments in home care over the past four years are already making a substantial impact in reducing hospital burdens. Home care providers have delivered nearly 10 million additional hours of care since 2022, enabling more individuals to receive necessary support in their own homes. Concurrently, the proportion of long-term care residents who could potentially be supported at home has decreased to 5.5 percent, now the lowest rate nationwide.
While these results are promising, the desperate actions of exhausted unpaid caregivers indicate that the demand for home care continues to rise. To meet this need, we must invest in more staff.
Challenges in Home Care Workforce Compensation
Home care is fundamentally about the people who deliver it—not expensive buildings with high operational costs. It relies on dedicated teams of personal support workers (PSWs), nurses, and therapists who work in patients' homes to assist with bathing safely, managing medications, recovering from surgery, or regaining strength after an illness.
To sustain and grow home care, we must ensure it is an attractive workplace with competitive compensation. Currently, home care workers are seeing their wages fall behind other sectors of the healthcare industry. Those employed in hospitals and long-term care settings have received compensation increases of up to 5.25 percent, yet the government has not recently invested to similarly boost home care pay.
Therapy services, which are in high demand and critical for the safe discharge of many patients from hospitals, are particularly vulnerable. Their compensation rates have lost significant ground in recent years, making it difficult to retain experienced professionals.
The Impact of Targeted Investments
When wages lag, experienced PSWs, nurses, and therapists leave home care, and new graduates seek employment elsewhere. The government is investing to add more hours of home care, but we also need targeted investments to ensure there are enough professionals available to deliver that care.
Deloitte Canada estimates that a $256 million investment aimed at growing and supporting the home care workforce would deliver 1.9 million more hours of care. This funding would provide the government with a 46 percent return on investment by facilitating faster hospital discharges and delaying or avoiding long-term care placements.
Additionally, investing another $32 million targeted toward therapists' compensation would help attract sufficient staff to home care, eliminating the more than 5,000-person waitlist for therapist services in the province.
Seizing the Opportunity in Ontario’s 2026 Budget
Together, these investments would have a profound impact. The additional care would relieve pressure on hospitals and provide real relief to unpaid caregivers, reducing burnout and preventable emergency department visits.
Ontario’s 2026 budget presents a crucial opportunity to invest where the returns are evident. By ensuring competitive compensation, we can recruit and retain the PSWs, nurses, and therapists who make home care possible. This will unlock more hours of care, expedite hospital discharges, decrease unnecessary ER visits, and help people maintain their health at home.
Cameron MacKay is the Chief Executive Officer of Home Care Ontario, the voice of home care in the province.
