Canadian Medical Ass’n President says warehousing seniors costs billions

Canada’s hospitals are “overflowing at the seams” with patients who don’t need to be there – frail and aging seniors, many of them with dementia, who have nowhere else to go, says the incoming leader of the Canadian Medical Association. The “warehousing of seniors” is costing the system $2.3 billion a year and highlights urgent need for a national rethink of seniors’ care, Dr. Chris Simpson said in his inaugural speech Wednesday as CMA president.

Simpson, who also chairs the national Wait Times Alliance, said Canadians are facing long waits for virtually every non-urgent test, surgery or procedure “because the beds needed are filled with patients who don’t need to be in hospitals.”

Seniors awaiting placement in other facilities are occupying about 15 per cent of hospital beds. But “instead of focusing on getting them back to their independence we put them in beds, because that’s what we do in hospitals. We put people to bed instead of putting them in a care environment that lifts them up and restores them and helps them live a dignified life.”

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