The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
AlzheimerÕs disease. A bad stroke. These are the things we expect will send seniors into nursing homes. But what about not being able to mow the lawn or shop for groceries? A lack of home care and community supports means difficulty with these simple tasks can force seniors from their homes into an institutional life long before itÕs necessary, argues this yearÕs Atkinson Fellowship writer Judy Steed. SteedÕs work chronicles the crisis Canada faces as our population bulge of baby boomers age into their senior years. WeÕre on the precipice. If we donÕt change the way we fund care for the elderly, it will bankrupt us all. The consequences of not providing enough home care Ð from basic assistance to the medically necessary Ð isnÕt just a depressing loss of independence for seniors, though thatÕs bad enough. It is also an ever-growing financial millstone around all our necks. Some community care managers say they could Òdo wondersÓ keeping seniors happy and healthy at home with a few thousand dollars more. The default option, which occurs too often, is a nursing home for the vastly greater sum of $43,000 annually. The stage in between can be even pricier: a hospital bed costing up to $1,200 a night. And when seniors wind up in an emergency room, doctors may not even know how to help them. Of the 8,000 hours of training medical students get, just 60 hours are in geriatrics. When an ambulance pulls up to the hospital with a senior, a common assumption is a heart attack. A battery of expensive tests are ordered and the emergency ward gets backed up. The answer is often much simpler: drugs. Seniors take way too many drugs, often prescribed by various specialists, with no one paying attention to the overall picture. ItÕs no wonder seniors are confused by all the pill bottles on their dressers and often take them incorrectly, or not at all. At every turn, SteedÕs work shines a spotlight on a system that fails seniors and taxpayers. Seniors are forced into costly nursing homes, given care by doctors who have little specialized training, and are regularly medicated into oblivion. The system must instead focus on early intervention and prevention. This may require help from the federal government, which has done little to date. Ottawa should consider a national home care program, sharing the costs with the provinces, as Steed recommends, and a national drug agency to monitor prescriptions. In addition, society has to find ways to encourage seniors to stay involved and to value the contributions they make, because loneliness and boredom can be as devastating as the physical indignities that come with age.
