Now, thanks to advances in medicine, we are living much longer lives, likely with a number of illnesses that have become rendered as chronic diseases. However, while our patients have changed, our health care systems haven’t — the focus needs to shift from just fixing issues to keeping these patients living independently in the community with increasing levels of homecare or nursing care.
Instead, our hospitals, designed to deal with discrete emergent issues, have become incubators for these patients as they await the right “social” environment for their discharge. Such patients take up about 15% of Canada’s acute care beds — representing 7,500 Canadians each day and at an annual cost of $2.3 billion annually, with dementia alone accounting for over 30% of such hospitalization days. This keeps us in a near-constant state of overcapacity. The situation is similar in other developed countries like the United Kingdom. It is high time to refocus and redevelop our health care systems to respond to the unique needs of our aging population, who collectively represent 60% of all hospital days in Canada.