Long Term Care In Canada Essay

Canada’s demographics are changing. The baby-boomer generation is getting older, and the senior age group of the population ages 65 and older outnumber the youth demographic (fourteen years and younger). This is according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (2011). The Institute also states that the senior’s population requires the most healthcare and they also require the most funding due to the frequency of visits to hospitals and clinics (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2011, p.9). It has been predicted that as the population ages there will be issues with the financial capabilities of the already struggling health care system (“Is Our Health Care System Underfunded?”, 1983), and due to the financial struggles, the health care workers will be affected, which then …show more content…
Firstly, due to an increase in the amount of people who will need medical care and increased wait times due to understaffing issues, the medical facilities will be overpopulated. These institutions will not be able to accept any more patients until a spot opens up. This does not apply just to hospitals, but also clinics and long-term care facilities. The older generation is waiting either at home or in a hospital to get accepted into one of these facilities. These patients that are waiting in hospitals are waiting for weeks to get into these homes ("Ontario caregivers face double the stress load they did 4 years ago," 2015). Usually, in order for every person to be seen, the patients who are non-emergent would have to be discharged earlier than they would normally be. But for the ones who are waiting to be accepted into long-term care facilities this could be dangerously. They could be living in their own homes, which is not the safest environment for them. This means that there is an increased risk of injury such as falls because their homes could pose a physical threat. These risks are why they’re waiting to get into a