In the 2003 Romanow report and health care accords, it was pointed out that the next big challenge in our health care system will be the need to provide home care as an alternative to institutional care, simply because the cost of institutional care is impossible. The only option is really to develop the home care process and sector. That includes both providing better for-pay home care services and also somehow providing an incentive and facilitation for those family members who provide the added care.
In addition to all of that financial piece, there is the facilitation that the formal health care system has to provide to the family caregivers; that is, they have to recognize that they exist and they have to tell them where the resources are, and they have to provide and develop home dialysis systems, for example—which exist now, but there are other things that are necessary. There is also a necessity to use technology more imaginatively, to monitor the family in the home, to monitor medications, and that kind of thing.
All of these things are part of an overall package that allows people to age safely at home and keep them out of the formal health care system, especially institutional care.