Policy Guidance for the Recognition of Essential Care Partners as Members of the Care Team
This policy guidance builds on our earlier Policy Guidance for the Reintegration of Caregivers as Essential Care Partners. ECPs play a key role across the continuum of care to support quality and safety of care of their loved ones. As such, it is important that they are fully integrated as part of the care team. The policy guidance was co-developed as part of a 2022 collaborative policy lab process that included policy/decision-makers, health system leaders who implement policy and the people impacted by policy decisions: providers, patients, * families and caregivers. This policy guidance may be applied in all settings where people receive care, including hospitals, long-term care, congregate care facilities, primary care, home care and elsewhere in the community. Lessons learned throughout the pandemic point to the need to crisis-proof person-centred policies and practices that fully embed and integrate ECPs across the continuum of care to ensure a more resilient health system in the face of future crises. Two guiding principles underlie this policy guidance:
- Value and recognize the role of ECP throughout the journey of care.
- ECPs are partners in care, not replacements for other healthcare team members.
The implementation of this guidance should be based on the local context of the healthcare facility. Changes made to processes and policies, and the communication of these policies, need to be co-developed with patients, families, caregivers and providers in order to meet everyone’s collective needs.
