Canada’s aging population is putting pressure on our outdated health care system. The realities of population aging mean our system must evolve to be a long-term care system. It needs to shift its focus from hospitals and physicians towards a far greater reliance on community care, home care, and nursing homes. Strains are already evident: long wait times for nursing homes and home care, increasing complexity of care needs for the lucky who have secured public LTC beds, persistently high numbers of patients in acute care hospitals who need LTC, and spill-over to private retirement homes for increasingly complex care. Canadians are rightly anxious about access to and the quality of care they will receive in later life.
