Grant: Operating Grant - Priority Announcement: Knowledge Translation

Home care programs are growing exponentially across Canada both in terms of numbers and acuity of clients. Costs are also on the rise. Home care is a major strategy across Canadian provinces to help manage system pressures and client health care needs. Case management, the process of assessing client needs, care planning, ongoing care coordination and evaluation, is a key strategy; and the one constant, in home care programs across Canada. Unprecedented growth in home care has resulted in higher caseloads of increasing intensity. Measures for the intensity of case manger caseloads and the necessary work associated with their caseloads are not standard. We do not know the impact of caseloads and their intensity on quality of care and resultant outcomes for home care clients and families. The main goal is to understand case manager work, workload, and caseload intensity within different home care contexts (i.e., different populations/geographic regions). Specific objectives are to: 1) identify and examine factors that influence case manager work, workload, and caseload intensity within different home care contexts, 2) explore associations that case managers draw between work-related factors and the quality of care and health outcomes client and families, 3) explore the relationship between case manager caseload/workload factors and client health outcomes, and 4) identify attributes of reasonable, equitable, and manageable caseloads as perceived by case managers, leaders, and case manager teams within different home care contexts. This study will generate new knowledge about case manager work, workload, and caseload intensity. As home care programs continue to grow case manager caseloads must be reasonable and manageable in order to achieve positive client health outcomes, the ultimate goal in any health care delivery program. This work has relevance for rural, suburban and urban areas as it will be carried out in multiple communities with a variety of client types.