Case Study: Elderly Long Term Care

Elderly Long Term Care: Proposal to the Canadian Government
Michael Burgess
University of Western Ontario Introduction:
Need:
The elderly demographic, aged 65 and up, is one of the largest growing age groups in Canada. See figure 1 for the increase of how many elderly are predicted for the next years. This has caused a shortage of options for those in need of assistance. In Canada, only 7.1% of elderly have access to nursing homes (Government of Canada, 2013). See figure 2 for how many people are in nursing homes in each age group. At one of the nursing homes in Cambridge, I was told that it will take approximately 10 years to get through the waiting list and finally secure a spot in a nursing home. Since nursing homes are needed

The main assistive device that will provide the most help and will have a high cost is a stair lift. I believe that if each company selling this assistive equipment was to do these forms, they could advertize and provide a lower price to consumers who are not able to pay for it. Also, since many of these assistive technologies are very expensive, we will provide a discounted monthly fee that will attempt to provide access to all

A caregiver is a person who is hired to help elderly people with many tasks that they may not be able to do on their own. This usually includes bathing, dressing, basic grooming, laundry, etc. If you hire someone for these tasks, it becomes very expensive and can be inconvenient if you need something done when the caregiver is not there. A nursing home is another form of care and this involves an elderly person moving from their home to a building full of all amentities necessary for living well. The only downside to nursing homes is that they are the most exepnsive alternative and that there is a large waiting list for getting into one. In 2010, the Ontario Health Quality council reported, “wait times for a long-term care bed in Ontario have tripled since 2005” (Born, 2011). A nursing home has become a last resort because of these reasons and we need to do everything in our power to alleviate the amount of demand for these nursing homes. Figure 1: Projected 65+ Demographic (Government of Canada,