Standardized Benefits and Protections

Action Plan Commitment: Plan to standardize benefits and protections to all residential care clients, regardless of where care is received by January 2013.

What does it mean for me?

Historically, facilities regulated under the Hospital Act have had different regulatory protections for residents than facilities regulated by the Community Care and Assisted Living Act. To address these differences, the Ministry has developed a “Plan to Standardize Benefits and Protections for Residential Care Clients” with specific actions that demonstrate the Ministry’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that residential care services are safe, transparent, responsive and accountable.

Many of the actions in the Plan take immediate steps to ensure the same standards, benefits, active oversight and inspection requirements, including public reporting of inspection reports, and complaints processes apply to all publicly subsidized residential care facilities. Many of the changes described in this Plan also apply to private-pay residential care facilities.

Some examples of the actions include an amendment to the Patients’ Bill of Rights Regulation, which extends additional protections to residential care clients living in facilities governed under the Hospital Act, such as requiring an operator to advise persons who are being admitted of all fees, charges, and policies. A new provincial policy has been introduced that ensures that individuals who raise concerns about health care will be protected from reprisal. New measures to promote fairness and transparency across facilities include development of a tool to establish best practice for client contracts and implementation of an updated process for clients who apply for a temporary reduction in their client rate due to serious financial hardship.

Other key priorities to promote standardization are described in the Plan, which can be found at: Plan to Standardize Benefits and Protections for Residential Care Clients (PDF, 586KB).

Links:

• Plan to Standardize Benefits and Protections for Residential Care Clients (PDF, 586KB)
• To find information about publicly subsidized residential care services, go to the Home and Community Care website main page, and select “Care Options and Costs”, which will provide links to Short-Term Residential Care Services and Long-Term Residential Care Services: Home and Community Care
• The Home and Community Care Policy Manual can be found at: www.gov.bc.ca/hccpolicymanual.
• The Patients’ Bill of Rights Regulation can be found at: http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/37_2010