New report looks at how seniors receive healthcare in Canada
Posted June 18, 2019 9:25 am.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A new report from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons says when it comes to Canadians 65 and older, doctors are more likely to see women but actually provide more medical services to men.
The report looks at what services Canadian seniors are using most as the population ages. The College’s director of health policy, Steve Slade, says the hope is for policy makers to take notice.
“We’ve seen the grey tsunami coming for decades in Canada but we really haven’t taken a deep dive into our data to see who is doing what, and how much of it are they doing,” he says. “And what we saw was some really quite fascinating variations in terms of how family doctors, other specialists, are providing care to seniors.”
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Slade is hoping the data will fill in some of the blanks in information about seniors’ care for those making policy decisions for the future.
“They’ll look at our data and see that there are differences in the way that family doctors and internists and ophthalmologists and geriatricians are practicing and focusing their care on seniors and that that will get factored into some of their decision making.”
Health Care for an Aging Population: A Study of How Physicians Care for Seniors in Canada looked at how 54,000 doctors provide care to seniors.
The report also found seniors received about one third of all services provided by physicians from 2015 to 2016.
