Quality community respiratory therapy services have been provided throughout Ontario for several decades. The current landscape includes small and large private sector companies, hospital providers, a combination of both through joint ventures as well as RTs working for primary care, physician specialists, CCACs and the Ventilator Equipment Pool (VEP). Community respiratory care has traditionally focussed on home oxygen therapy for chronic and palliative clients as well as ancillary equipment including CPAP and inhalation therapies. Physician practices and CCACs have begun utilizing RT’s in respiratory programming.
Complex respiratory care is available in many communities but funding has been typically limited to equipment and supply provision. An exception to this are VEP contracted RT services for clients being initiated on community ventilation. Remaining gaps have been covered by those vendors willing to do pro bono work.
A gap in respiratory therapy care support exists in the community/home setting. Several reports, generated within Ontario have confirmed this. These reports recommend that RT services be implemented or expanded in the community setting. These statistics are also confirmed by the many personal stories related by respiratory therapists and the patient/clients who are directly affected by this gap.
Several reports generated within Ontario have confirmed this. These reports recommend that RT services be implemented or expanded in the community setting. The associated statistics are also confirmed by the many personal stories related by respiratory therapists, patient/clients and other caregivers who are directly affected by this gap.
More recently, CCACs have sporadically begun to contract RT services.
Advocacy work is ongoing, and knowledge dissemination is an important part of the work being done. Some of the work underway includes identifying, exploring and addressing issues relating to management of COVID-19 patients in community settings. Standardized spirometry medical directives are also in development. Looking forward, we anticipate reviewing the data from the Applied Health Research Question (AHRQ) study being conducted at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) that will map RRT practice by LHIN sub-region across Ontario and correlate access to RRTs and health care utilization by COPD patient prevalence.
If you are interested in participating in this work, please connect with Committee Chair, Sylvia Mortimer at s.mortimer@dafht.ca
