The percentage of B.C.’s population over the age of 65 keeps growing.
Already, a fifth of British Columbians are considered seniors — and this is expected to grow to a fourth of the population within 10 years.
But health and long-term care services are not keeping pace.
Over the past six years, wait lists for long-term care have grown by 200 per cent, while average wait times have risen from roughly 144 days to more than 277. The average wait time has increased by 34 per cent in the last year alone.
The wait list for a long-term care bed has more than 7,000 people on it.
“Having to wait months for a senior to be admitted to long-term care puts further stress on family caregivers who can no longer care for their loved one at home,” said Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt, who has been sounding the alarm about this looming crisis since taking over in his position two years ago.
Levitt released his annual monitoring report on Thursday, March 26.
On the health-care delivery front, he delivered some good news with the bad. Compared to six years ago, more of the top five surgeries for seniors are now being completed. These include knee replacements, hip replacements, abdominal hernia repair, prostate surgery and cataract surgery.
But despite this, the wait time for four of those continues to increase, with knee replacement waits up 61 per cent and hip replacement waits up 72 per cent. Cataract wait times are the only ones that have decreased, dropping 27 per cent over the past six years. Prostate surgery waits are up 29 per cent, and abdominal surgery repair waits are up 16 per cent.
Delays in surgery can have a disproportionate effect on people age 65 and older, Levitt said, by worsening health and disease progression, taking away independence, creating more complications, and ultimately, resulting in a higher risk of death.
“Timely treatment can make a big difference in health outcomes,” he added.
There are also many seniors in hospital beds, not because they are undergoing a major procedure, but because they are waiting for a bed in long-term care. Approximately 5,900 patients waited in a hospital for a transfer to long-term care last year. The average stay was 38 days, up from 33 in 2019.
This is expensive: it costs $1,200 per day to keep these people in a hospital bed, but just $294 per day for a long-term care bed.
One of the easiest solutions to some of the issues facing seniors is to make home care free. This type of service is provided at no cost regardless of income in Alberta and Ontario, but not in B.C., which limits free home care to those earning less than $30,000 per year. With this care costing as much as $9,000 per year, it can eat up a third of a senior’s total income.
Statistics provided by Levitt’s office from a report compiled last July show that 12.5 per cent of newly admitted long-term care applicants could have been treated at home. This is higher than the national average of 9.6 per cent, and significantly higher than Ontario’s 5.5 per cent rate or Alberta’s 6.1 per cent — the two provinces where that type of care is free for all.
Despite the seniors advocate showing that unmet home support demands and cost barriers are significant factors in expanding long-term care wait lists, the government has taken no action.
The Ministry of Health provided a statement saying the province has invested approximately $3.5 billion over the past five years in primary care, home health, long-term care, assisted living, and respite services, and continues to find new ways to improve care by expanding programs such as Better at Home, LTC@Home and Hospital at Home.
Levitt says these need even more money.
“We need to invest much more in community-based services to help people age and place at home,” he said.
No matter what the province chooses to do, Levitt said that with the population ageing at the rate it is, it is not an option to invest in seniors.
“There’s no way around this,” he said.