The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Canada ninth in the international quality-of-death index released on July 14, 2010.
Canadian families frequently shoulder up to 25% of the total cost of palliative care associated with home care services, nursing, and personal care services. This is an increase, and it's growing because Canadians are more often cared for at home. If they're in acute care settings, it costs less. Now that they're wanting to die at home, it's costing more out of their pocket.
Although Canada scored within the top 10 countries examined, we are still unable to provide valuable hospice palliative care for over 70% of our population. We're here to make four recommendations for an investment in a predictable population health change. Our recommendations can be found in the Blueprint for Action, and we brought copies for you.
The first recommendation is to ensure that all Canadians have access to high-quality hospice, palliative, and end-of-life care. This must be an integral part of our health care system and available in all settings, including hospitals, long-term care facilities, complex care settings, residential hospices, individual homes, or in shelters. When someone is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, involving palliative care early can provide a better quality of care and reduce suffering.
The second area is to encourage Canadians to plan and discuss their end-of-life hospice palliative care. End of life will not be a priority in the health care system until it's a priority for all Canadians. We feel strongly that it isn't until a Canadian bumps up against the health care system in a point of crisis that they actually realize this.
With the aging population, more attention must be focused on this issue. The type and quality of care that people receive at the end of their lives depends in large part on their ability and willingness to talk about end of life. So we would like to educate Canadians and raise awareness about the importance of advanced care planning; encourage patients to talk about their end-of-life care and go through the process of advance care planning; and encourage much more public discussion about death and dying and the importance of high-quality end-of-life care.
The third one is to provide more support for family caregivers. We have a number of pieces in there, and I'm not going to lay them all out because they're in the report. Generally speaking, we'd like to look at the compassionate care benefit being extended, and also to look at a caregiver tax credit similar to the child tax credit.
The last one is to improve the quality and consistency of hospice palliative care in Canada. We'd like to continue to look for funding to continue to support research and palliative and end-of-life care.
In closing, quality palliative care is the right of every Canadian, yet not every Canadian can access these services at the time when they and their families need it the most. Combining this with an aging population, the system is being stretched and tested as never before. Issues about health care in Canada may appear complex, but the conclusion with public investment is simple. Canada can invest now to support an aging population or will predictably pay much higher financial and human suffering costs within the foreseeable future.
The CHPC looks forward to hearing from the government in response and hopes that action will be taken on many of these recommendations.