Ontario's home-care system - which keeps thousands of ill and elderly people out of hospitals and nursing homes - is in "full-blown crisis," a group of small, local home-care agencies says.

The result is that a number of smaller agencies have been out-bid on contracts they held for years or even decades, disrupting care for thousands of frail, ill and elderly Ontarians. 
"They're going to lose a familiar face and they're not going to understand why," Valerie Bishop de Young, executive director of home-care agency VHA Health and Home Support in Ottawa, said yesterday. 

The problem is that Premier Dalton McGuinty's government is refusing to revamp a contract bidding system introduced by the previous Conservative administration that favours big home-care operators. 

"We feel it was rigged," said Bishop de Young, whose agency, a member of the Ontario Community Support Association, is laying off many of its 200 nurses, homemakers and personal support workers after losing a long-standing contract in the nation's capital to several larger firms. 

Small, local agencies in other areas of the province -including Community Care East York which is laying off up to 70 staff after losing a contract - are in similar positions. 

Bishop de Young said VHA was frozen out because the government's request for proposal system requires bidding companies to have provided a high number of hours of service in the previous three years - an amount that few small agencies could be expected to meet. 

"I'm looking for a level playing field," she said. 

Agencies like Bishop de Young's will call for changes at a Queen's Park news conference today, with VHA planning a protest in front of McGuinty's constituency office in Ottawa tomorrow morning. 

Pressure for change is also coming from Liberal politicians, with Brant MPP Dave Levac this week calling on Health Minister George Smitherman to fix a bidding process that is "neither accountable nor transparent," the Brantford Expositor reported. 

Levac wrote to Smitherman after the local Red Cross lost a home-care contract it had held for 50 years, resulting in the loss of more than 100 jobs and disrupting care for hundreds. 

"I believe it is to time to ensure our frail and vulnerable in this province are treated with dignity and not as pawns in a flawed process," the Expositor quoted Levac as saying. 

Health ministry spokesperson Tanya Cholakov said "no review is planned at this time" for the bidding process, which is based on government guidelines but is administered by the province's Community Care Access Centres. "The centres are responsible for all the decisions," Cholakov said. "The ministry doesn't have any role or any authority in overruling the decisions."