Healthcare Infrastructure for Aging Populations, Western Canada

This special opening keynote from the BC Seniors Advocate will address the disconnect between what is being spent to build LTC, what is being funded, and what residents actually need.

The pandemic put a spotlight on weak links in Canada’s Long-Term Care System—from care models to physical environments that were not conducive to health, safety or wellbeing. This sparked conversations about how to support the creation of more small care home settings.

In 2022 the CSA released a new standard that specifically recommends this approach. Since that time examples of the model have emerged in Canada, but it is still not the model of choice for many provinces who are up against a fast-changing demographic. This session will provide insights on the current LTC landscape and the feasibility of the small care home model.

• Analyzing current challenges within Canada’s LTC system
• Describing the small care home model
• Examining the relationship between resident centred care and the built environment
• Providing examples of the small care model LTC in Canada and other jurisdictions
• Measuring the impact of this model on residents, caregivers and staff
• Identifying the barriers to moving away from institutional, traditional models in favour of implementing the small home model
• Exploring what would enable this model to succeed in the Canadian context

This session will put a special focus on how to incorporate the lived experience of LTC residents and family caregivers into decisions about the physical environment as well as the delivery of care. Loneliness, boredom and accessibility challenges are often part of the resident experience.

Learn about channels for engagement that are actively working to pinpoint and address key areas for improvement for current and future LTC settings.

This session will explore how the physical design of LTC spaces can support, and in fact prioritize, mental health for residents, care partners and staff. Building design in LTC facilities can significantly impact mental health outcomes for residents by influencing   factors like privacy, sensory stimulation, access to nature, wayfinding, and overall sense of homeliness. Positive design elements could potentially reduce agitation, improve mood, and promote social interaction, while poor design can exacerbate anxiety and depression.  These same features or approaches could have extremely meaningful impacts for LTC staff as well, who are not immune to the impacts of poor design.

This session will tour the design of Canada’s first publicly funded Long Term Care home built on the principles of a Dementia village, and explore how the design was conceived to support a novel model of care called “Home for Us”, which is a new social relational model of care intended to inject autonomy and purpose into resident lives.

Lessons learned and innovations will be highlighted, and their application to Providence Living’s next project in Prince George BC will be explored in the context of a Prince George project tour.

This session will put a spotlight on the Myrna Daniels Seniors Medicine Centre in Toronto. A first of its kind in Canada, this centre is being designed to improve the emergency care experience for older adults with complex care needs. This session will delve in to how the built environment will help support this mission.

• Understanding how seniors experience healthcare settings and the challenges that can arise
• Detailing the research and engagement process that informed the design of the emergency department
• Addressing seniors’ unique needs (as it relates to hearing, vision, mobility, cognitive considerations) through design elements
• Improving safety through fixu
• Creating an environment that promotes calm and wellbeing through biophilic imagery