Funding home care and long-term care is fast becoming the main challenge of our outdated medicare system — a system developed in the mid-twentieth century for a young population that mostly required acute care from hospitals and physicians.
We know that Canada’s population is aging. Among the many statistics that have been reported is how in 2015, the proportion of Canadian seniors surpassed that of youth under 15 for the first time. The gap will continue to widen over the next 20 years.
As the Canadian population continues to age, there is a need to revisit conventional thinking regarding the provision of health care services for seniors to ensure that the system is sustainable for all Canadians. There are a number of misperceptions in current thinking.
The tragic stories of Ashley Smith, Edward Snowshoe and other inmates who have died while in Canadian correctional facilities have rightly made headlines around the country.
The Ontario government’s proposed reform of the provincial health care system is going forward with a glaring omission: primary mouth care.
Recently federal and provincial health ministers agreed to create a working group to explore how to improve Canadians’ access to pharmaceutical drugs. In the wake of this, there is new optimism that pharmacare, publicly funded and universally available to Canadians, might one day come to pass.
I am privileged to help patients deal with a variety of common disorders such as ear infections, pharyngitis and sinus inflammation. People suffer a great deal from these problems, especially when they are in the acute phase.
Canadians likely had many important conversations with their loved ones over the holidays, but probably most didn’t talk about what should happen in the event they could no longer speak or make medical decisions for themselves.
One of the biggest threats to quality of life and health in aging is the loss of cognitive abilities and functional autonomy that are associated with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
The U.S. health care system is not a universally accessible system – it is a publicly and privately-funded patchwork of fragmented systems and programs. Insured Americans are covered by both public and private health insurance, with a majority covered by private insurance plans through their employers.
