Keep out, patient!
How UHN-West Park’s Outpatient Services are helping patients stay at home longer and get their lives back.
Over the next 20 years, Canada’s population of seniors — those age 65 and older — is expected to grow by 68%.
By 2034, the 70+ group will double.
Seniors.
Their latest stats are like the human equivalent of climate change.
It’s just one negative headline after another.
With healthcare costs anticipated to soar and with no end in sight of relief for the “sandwich generation” and caregivers, it seems as if our seniors have become nothing more than a burden.
But the fact is, seniors are not some isolated group, separate and distinct from society.
In all likelihood, chances are you’re dealing with an aging parent or have felt the immense loss of losing a parent. And, while people can argue about the science behind climate change, there is no getting around the fact that we are all going to be a senior one day.
It’s time to think differently about ageing
Andre Picard 's wrote in Neglected No More about COVID-19 impact on seniors "... the real villain in this tragedy is society's profound and long-standing neglect of elders."
In Andrew J. Scott’s ‘The Longevity Imperative’ , the author writes that instead of celebrating one of humanity’s greatest achievements, ageing has been turned into a “prospective nightmare”.
Rather, and urgently, we need to focus on constructing a society that prepares us for longer lives and ensuring that the quality of life matches its new found quantity.
University Health Network 's West Park Healthcare Centre understands that most people, seniors included, want to recover in their own home. If they are hospitalized, for West Park, it is imperative we get them back home as quickly as possible and avail of outpatient rehabilitation or therapy sessions on a scheduled basis to help their recovery journey.
Keep out, patient!
The desire to get out of hospital and return home is a powerful and universal sentiment, fueled by a yearning for the comfort, familiarity, and independence that home represents.
In the often sterile, clinical environment of a hospital, patients find themselves longing for the warmth of their own bed, the sounds of their loved ones, and the routine of their daily lives.
Anyone who has been in hospital knows exactly the feeling.
And West Park certainly knows that feeling. We get it.
We know firsthand the role families play in rehabilitation and complex continuing care (CCC) settings and how Family Zones (FZs) – a section of the patient room that visitors use to visit their loved ones – can be used to facilitate, and augment family presence. It’s why and how we designed our new hospital.
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By investing in doubling our outpatient care capacity in our new hospital building, West Park’s strategy is to act as a “bridge” to help patients recover from an acute care experience and return home sooner.
It also acts as a “buffer” to prevent acute care admissions as referrals to our expanded outpatient programs help improve health and wellness to avoid an emergency visit.
Driven by research, and inspired by the latest in technological advances, West Park has built a holistic range of restorative outpatient services that include:
Respiratory: Covering the gamut of respiratory conditions including tuberculosis, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), Pulmonary Fibrosis, and patients requiring long-term ventilation, many of whom are seniors.
Geriatrics: Our Geriatric Interprofessional Assessment Clinic offers comprehensive assessment of the domains associated with ageing to identify factors that can improve health, maximize independence and safety. Our new Geriatrics day program will provide the education and therapy of the inpatient program but the patient gets to go home at night.
Amputee: West Park’s Prosthetics and Orthotics department houses a full-service manufacturing facility, one that can build state-of-the-art prostheses and orthoses that will improve the quality of life and independence of amputee rehabilitation patients, advance limb preservation and the avoidance of secondary amputations, 80% of which are preventable. Over 2,500 people visit our P&O Centre annually to maintain their protheses.
Spasticity: More than 350,000 Canadians have spasticity, and for many it makes daily activities painful or impossible, can lead to deformity, and reduces their quality of life. West Park’s spasticity program is tackling one of the most untreated challenges facing Canadians impacted by stroke, MS and other neurological conditions affecting the central nervous system.
Outpatient Rehabilitation: Our expanded outpatient rehabilitation gym and water therapy pool means results-oriented rehabilitation through appropriate, timely and personalized treatments specific to patients’ individual rehabilitation needs. With our new space, we can offer wellness services providing integrated, multi-disciplinary and collaborative treatment within one facility.
“When ‘I’ is replaced by ‘WE’, even illness becomes wellness.” – Malcom X
UHN-West Park Healthcare Centre helps patients get their lives back by providing specialized rehabilitative and complex care after a life‐altering illness or injury such as lung disease, amputation, stroke, and traumatic musculoskeletal injuries.
By helping keep patients out of acute care; by helping them get back home as quickly as possible; by designing treatment plans that ensure high levels of patient engagement; by helping set and realize their goals to get back their lives – and as a consequence – help alleviate the burden on the patient’s family and caregiver, the overall effect is nothing short of transformative.
It is a highly-specialized, multi-disciplinary approach designed to meet the needs and demands of our ageing population – not just for today, but for tomorrow.
West Park’s transformation will continue with the creation of outdoor therapeutic environments by June 2025 where the power of nature can further nurture and better support patients on their recovery journey.
We have long known about the demographic changes coming our way. But as Andrew Scott says, “the challenge is not about how we deal with more old people in the future, it is about how we adjust to living for longer now.”
UHN-West Park Outpatient Services is going to play a hugely important role in how we make that adjustment.
The best part is that it’s happening now.
Not at some future indeterminate date.
But today.
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Acupuncture plays a key role in health prevention for Seniors and should be a critical part of outpatient services.
That's some serious growth. Adapting to longer lifespans is key. Kudos to UHN-West Park for stepping up their game. Doug Earle, CFRE