Indicators of Consistency of Home Care Providers under Managed Competition: A Case Report from Ontario

The study reported in this article examined the components of the benchmarks used to monitor consistency of provider by home care agencies competing for nursing and homemaking contracts in the Hamilton-Wentworth Community Care Access Centre. Comparisons of the impact on provider continuity of varying components of the benchmarks demonstrated that current benchmarks reveal little about the extent to which consistency of provider is achieved. Uniform standards must be adopted to allow for comparisons across agencies.