Abstract
Aging in place has long been a policy objective in Canadian healthcare, with particular concerns expressed about older adults in rural and remote regions. Health care restructuring is often linked to cost containment and reallocation of resources; this was the case with a British Columbia (BC) Ministry of Health mandated initiative that aimed to reduce hospital visits and delay admissions to long term care for older adults and was positioned as supporting aging in place. Interior Health (IH) – one of six BC health authorities – ‘repositioned’ (i.e. restructured) primary and community care to support aging in place by creating Seniors Health and Wellness Centres (SHWCs) in Kelowna, Kamloops, and Salmon Arm/Revelstoke. For their ‘transformation’ initiative, Northern Health (NH) created 26 primary care homes or inter-professional teams spread across their region in a rural distributive model. Our current research, Aging in Place in Rural and Remote Regions (APR3) is a multi-case study comparing NH’s transformation with IH’s repositioning, focusing on the extent to which each initiative supports aging in place for rural and remote older adults, and addresses their social determinants of health. We used mixed methods of data collection and analysis, including 13 key informant interviews and document analysis for NH and IH; for IH we also analyzed service usage data for the three SHWCs (n=2343) and gathered 10 service user questionnaires. In our paper, we present our case studies, discuss our preliminary findings, and indicate implications for healthcare restructuring in urban areas and rural and remote regions.
Presenters
Wendy HulkoProfessor, Social Work, Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia, Canada Noeman Mirza
Associate Professor, Faculty of Nursing, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Medical Perspectives on Aging, Health, Wellness
KEYWORDS
Aging, Rural, Healthcare Restructuring, Social Determinants of Health, Case Study
