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letters to the editor

Deareditor: Re: Care co-ordination is d.irect care - Oct.22 Nowhere in Bob Hepburn's opinion piece ("Crusading for truth in health spending" - Oct' 18) is care

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Community care system too bureaucratic

co-ordination referred to as "overhead.l' The comment to that effect in this letter by Sharon Baker, on behalf of the Ontario Association of CommuHepburn's opinionpiece is another case in point. In her response, several key facts are omitted. Baker failed to mention the internal layers of management over care co-ordinators, and the support staff under them, included in the 91 cents. She also failed to mention that community care access centres include items such as "amortization of capital assets" in their 91 cents.

nity Care Access Centres,

is baseless and

inflammato-

ry

Baker, an accountant hersell inappropriately

I believe care co-ordination is an important and

necessary aspect of care delivery.

However, it is not direct care, as many care coordinators themselves admit. The Ontario Associa' tion of Community Care Access Centres website itself makes the distinction, stating "your community care
access centre connects you

with the care you need at your communitY" home and in My issue is not with individual care co-ordinators, but with the overly bureaucratic system in which they work that sees roughly $1 of care co-ordination for every$2of directcare. This is not lean care delivery The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, which is the professional association representing many care co.ordinators, supports my view that the current system is riddled with layers ofbureaucratic administration, unnecessary duplication, and ineffi-

failed to acknowledge the sigaificant cents on the dollar siphoned off to cover the executive salaries, administrative expenses, bricks and mortar, and profits of front-line agencies contracted by community care access centres to deliver direct care. Any objective analysis would determine that the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres claim more than gl cents ofevery community care access centres'dollar is direct care is categorically
false.

That Baker and the Ontario Associatiorl of Com-

munity Care Access Centres perpetuate this falsehood is transparently self-serving, and their use of
taxpayers'dollars to do so is shameful. Finally it is concerning that Baker and the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres have
once again brazenly used media to express

theirpoint

ciencies, Which is why they are proposing a different system of service delivery altogether. My other issue is that Ontario Association of Communrty Care Access Centres media propa$anda has

of view knowing their organization has imposed an unconstitutional gag order which denies media contact to front line workers who might disagree. This enfrrced one-sided conversation is wrong.

DaaidWilliams
Guelph

been deliberately misleading' Baker's response to