VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – After a decade of cuts to home and community care for seniors, a new study finds there have been serious consequences in our hospitals, particularly in terms of wait times and overcrowding.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests we are all affected as seniors’ access to residential care services, home support and home nursing is reduced.

“People can’t get the early intervention, the programs that will help them remain in their community and their own homes. Instead they don’t get help until they are in crisis and need to be hospitalized,” explains study author Marcy Cohen.

She says the number of seniors taking up beds who could be cared for elsewhere has jumped at least 35 per cent in recent years.

“It’s seniors who are in hospital not because they need hospital services but because they can’t access the residential care, the palliative care, the home support, the nursing services they require,” adds Cohen.

The CCPA asserts reducing unnecessary hospitalizations by increasing home and community care services would take pressure off of hospitals, in terms of wait times in the ER and for elective surgeries.

“If you look at these two things separately, they seem overwhelming,” admits Cohen. “If you put them together and you actually look at developing a more comprehensive home and community care system, there is a way forward and it’s more cost-effective because it reduces the pressure in the most expensive part of the system, the hospitals.”