Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Seniors Part 3 - The Recomendation Recommendations and Solutions “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”   No one action will solve the problems that we face. What follows is a coherent program of linked areas of work, which if undertaken as a whole will shift the system. We begin with a short review and then look at each area in more detail in a follow up report. 9:15:47 PM    comment []

Seniors part 2   Healthcare Delivery - The Skilled Labour/Management Supply Shortage and the Workplace Culture Crunch – We have come to rely on a very sophisticated healthcare delivery system that relies on complex technology and systems. It therefore depends on attracting and retaining a very sophisticated workforce who can operate and deploy this technology effectively.   Most of the public debate on healthcare has focused on the capital and financial aspects of the system. This increasing dependency on complex technology and a shift in demography will compel us to focus on the human aspects of the system.   The current shortage of nurses and doctors is only the first step in a much larger and longer term shortage of skilled labour.   Most doctors and nurses in the system today will retire in the next 10 years and the age cohort that is coming that can replace them is one of the smallest in modern history. Simply seeing the problem of replacement in financial terms is too simplistic and does not get at the root problem.   Every sector of the economy is looking for skilled labour from the construction business, to medicine for we are living through a workplace revolution driven by technology and by demography.   What is different about the new technology and why does it force a change to the workplace?   9:14:10 PM    comment []

The Seniors are Coming - So You thought we had a healthcare problem Here is the first of a three part series on how we as baby boomers will hit the healthcare system The Seniors are coming! We are just coming to understand how improvements in parenting during the first six years of life can have substantial long-term positive affects on the emotional, educational, economic and health outcomes of our population.    This paper will suggest that we can use the same kind of analysis and approach to mitigate the potential risks of our health system and to our economy by the impending collision between our already overstretched healthcare system and the massive increase in potential load caused by the Baby Boomers shifting into the realm of seniors.   In the past, seniors made up only a small percentage of society. It is the “Boomer” aspect that will change everything. At every point in the life cycle, the sheer weight and scale of this group has shaken the institution of the day. This is the group that forced the building of all those schools, that forced the expansion of universities, that pushed up the price of housing, that built the suburbs. This is the group that will hit the healthcare system. The advance guard is here already. As a group its average age is already 50 today. As it hits 60 in 2010, the full impact will start to be felt as about 10 million Canadian enter the early stages of old age.   “Cost drivers such as Canada's growing and ageing population and inflation are projected to increase provincial/territorial health expenditures from $56 billion to $85 billion in 10 years. This cost increase is likely an underestimate, as it does not take into account cost accelerators such as emerging and new technologies, the increased incidence of chronic and new diseases, and the cost of renewal. This could bring total provincial/territorial health spending to over $100 billion within the next decade.”[1]   We all “Know this”. But do we? We have an intellectual understanding. But we have not felt or experienced the impact yet so it may not feel “real”. So let’s dimension the potential problem so that we can feel its full scale and weight. We will then look at the most important factors and their interrelationships so that we can see the underlying system. Finally, we will examine what actions we can take to avoid the crunch. 9:07:34 PM    comment []

A Vision of the Future Land of the fat Obesity kills 300,000 people a year in America and is the nation's number-one health hazard. Nowhere is this more true than in Mississippi, where food is cheap and exercise unheard of. Matthew Engel visits the heaviest state of a country that is in danger of busting the scales. 8:45:25 PM    comment []