An 89 year-old man was discharged from hospital in Toronto and taken to his empty home instead of the retirement home where he’d come from and had been recovering from knee surgery. Patient advocates say this kind of dangerous situation will become more and more common as Canada’s aging population grows dramatically and hospitals are overwhelmed with admissions.
Nearly five million seniors live in Canada, comprising nearly 15 per cent of the population. But those numbers are growing quickly as the many people born after World War II reach their sixties.
Seniors often live alone in Canada
Seniors most often do not live with their children, tending to live independently for as long as possible and then moving to seniors’ residences.
Tadeusz Czubak was discharged from hospital on Monday and was taken by ambulance to his home. Ambulance attendants asked a neighbour to shovel his walk and look in on him since no one else was in the house. The neighbour found the heavily-medicated Czubak collapsed on his stairs and called his family.
He is back in hospital, suffering from blood clots and an infected knee.
“Grey tsunami” coming
“This kind of event will happen over and over again,” predicts Sholom Glouberman, president of Patients Canada. “The hospitals don’t take responsibility for anything that happens outside the hospital. And that’s the way the system has been structured.”
Those in the health-care system say they are well aware of the so-called grey tsunami that’s coming, and are scrambling to improve how they deal with the complex medical and care conditions associated with seniors.
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