The Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) believes there’s an opportunity in Saskatchewan to change the way patient care is delivered to an aging population.
The SMA is calling on leaders and the public to explore a bolder, more comprehensive approach to seniors care and health care generally.
The SMA believes that a broader, team-based approach to seniors care will yield better health outcomes for seniors and others. The leadership of the SMA is using the policy discussions happening around the provincial election as an appropriate opportunity to stimulate a deeper conversation around what seniors care could be in this province.
In addition to the provincial election, the timing couldn’t be better given Canada’s rapidly changing demographics. According to Statistics Canada, seniors are projected to represent over 20 per cent of the population by 2024 and up to 25 per cent of the Canadian population by 2036.
“Seniors have a different set of health-care needs and the SMA is looking for political leaders and others to start talking about ways that patient care for this specific group can be improved,” said Dr. Mark Brown, president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA).
“The current model is sometimes very narrowly focused on long-term care for seniors. While discussions around long-term care beds are important, we feel that there also needs to be advocacy for a broader perspective that takes into account seniors health-care needs. The current system is not an optimum one for so-called complex patients, patients who have serious disorders, mental health and addictions issues, and, of course, our older patients. We need to re-calibrate the health-care system to address these kinds of patients.”
“In addition to getting more geriatricians within the health-care system, there needs to be a shift to community care, one that is supported by a collaborative team of health-care providers,” said Dr. Brown.
“The SMA supports the work that the Canadian Medical Association is doing in this area. We think it’s important to understand that seniors care is more complex and not episodic,” he explained. “Our current system assumes episodic care and sees it as a series of separate events -- frequent hospitalization and institutionalization -- when really a system of continuous, inter-professional care would be a better way to meet the needs and desires of the elderly.”
“Our health-care system will experience serious challenges once baby boomers start to move through, and we actually haven’t really started to see the full impact of a larger seniors population.
“The current cohort of seniors hasn’t really strained the system. The SMA is urging policy makers to start to make these kinds of changes now, so that we’ll be in a better position to deal with the larger demographic pressures coming in five to ten years,” said Dr. Brown.
Dr. Brown said that an improved health-care system would include stronger intermediate care, and, where possible and appropriate, would also move the site of care out of hospitals and in the community in places like patients’ homes. He also noted that care teams, anchored by a physician but including a range of health-care practitioners, would help support such a community-based structure tailored to patient’s needs.
“For this new perspective to work there needs to be education and mentorship regarding geriatric care,” he said. “There needs to be strong collaboration and teamwork among all of the health-care practitioners, and there would need to be a commitment at many levels to such an approach. We want to avoid having the patient feel like they are bouncing from health-care professional to health-care professional, and instead they would experience a continuous delivery of the care.”
Dr. Brown noted that health records would be set up in a manner that would enable the health-care team to stay abreast of the patient’s status. “This is the kind of re-envisioning that we need our leaders to assist with bringing into reality so that the people this province can feel confident that their aging family members can get the care they need and want. “
The Saskatchewan Medical Association has identified a number of health-care issues to discuss leading up to the April 4 vote, including tobacco control, seniors care, and access to mental health care, among others.
