PILLAR THREE
Ensuring Older Canadians Have Access to Person-Centered, High Quality, and Integrated Care as Close to Home as Possible by Providers who Have the Knowledge and Skills to Care for Them
Currently, older Canadians constitute about 17.5% of the population, but account for nearly half of health and social care systems costs. Medicare, Canada’s national health insurance system, was established in 1966 when the median age of Canadians was 25.5 years of age and when most Canadians didn’t live beyond their late 60s or early 70s. These population characteristics have significantly changed in the following 50 years, yet Canada’s health care system has not fully adapted to meeting the needs of its ageing population. The majority of Canadians now see access to supportive and palliative care in or close to their homes, and a robust home care system, as top national priorities. With Canada recently experiencing the vast majority of its COVID-19 pandemic deaths in its congregate living settings, many are now advocating for strengthening the Canada Health Act and the Canada Health Transfer to ensure Canadians can feel confident that the health and long-term care systems will be ready to meet their needs.
To ensure current and future providers will have the knowledge and skills needed to provide Canadians the right care, in the right place, at the right time by the right provider, the national educational and accreditation bodies for all caring professions including doctors, nurses, social workers should mandate training around the care of the elderly in the same was as they do for other age groups, such as children.
The federal government can work with Canada’s provinces and territories to enable this pillar and associated activities in a variety of ways:
Ensuring Older Canadians Have Access to Appropriate, High Quality Long-Term Care, Palliative, and End-of Life Services
Ensuring older Canadians have access to high quality long-term care, palliative, and end-of life services as well as medications when and where needed can be achieved by investing and supporting the development of these essential areas of care. Read more on this opportunity in Evidence Brief #9.
Ensuring Older Canadians Have Access to Care Providers That are Trained to Specifically Provide the Care They Need
Ensuring that Canadians have access to care providers from all professions that are trained to specifically provide the care older people need can be achieved by prioritizing geriatric care skills development and training amongst Canada’s national educational and care accreditation bodies. Read more on this opportunity in Evidence Brief #10.
Developing Standardized Metrics and Accountability Standards to Enable a National Seniors Strategy
Ensuring that the health care system is iteratively retooled to meet the needs of an ageing population will require access to high quality information to help track performance in meeting collective goals, which can be achieved by establishing national metrics, information collection, and reporting systems through agencies like the Canadian Institutes for Health Information (CIHI) to help link funding to collective performance goals. Read more on this opportunity in Evidence Brief #11.
Ensuring the Needs of Older Adults are Recognized and Supported in Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Planning, Response, and Recovery Efforts
Ensuring that the older Canadians have their needs met in emergency and disaster preparedness planning, response and recovery efforts can be achieved by recognizing and ensuring their unique vulnerabilities are considered and supported, as well as those of their caregivers. Read more about this opportunity in Evidence Brief #12.