National Institute on Ageing research director counsels Iceland on Long-Term Care reform

As part of the country’s annual Health Care Congress, Iceland’s Minister of Health invited Dr. Samir Sinha to lead discussions on reforming long-term care (LTC).

“Over the past six years, my ongoing engagement with my colleagues in Iceland helped me to cultivate a deeper understanding of this country’s population, their attitudes towards ageing, and the challenges and opportunities they have been encountering as they age,” says Dr. Sinha, Director of Healthy Policy Research, National Institute on Ageing and adjunct professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management.

“This enabled me to provide more tailored, culturally relevant and appropriate, and achievable recommendations during the recent Health Care Congress.”

Since 2015, Dr. Sinha has worked closely with geriatricians and other health care professionals in Iceland to implement better models of emergency medical care for older adults. The focus of his current collaboration is to support the country’s long-term care reform efforts, including the development of its first National Policy on Ageing and Long-Term Care.

“For example, Iceland—like Canada—performs poorly in terms of how it spends its long-term care dollars,” says Dr. Sinha, who is also chairing HSO’s National Long-Term Care Services Standard Technical Committee (external link) , the group developing Canada’s new long-term care standards.

“For every króna (dollar) spent, 92 cents go towards warehousing older adults in its long-term care homes. And, despite being the recipients of the bulk of this funding, long-term care homes in Iceland today say they do not have sufficient resources to provide high quality care to residents.”

In both Iceland and Canada, governments provide little support to enable ageing in place. While long-term care reform received national attention in Canada’s recent federal election, major parties made few commitments to expand homecare programs. The National Institute on Ageing has shown—through reports like  (PDF file) The Future Co$t of Long-Term Care in Canada (external link) —that the provision of homecare is more cost effective and sustainable than long-term care over time. It is also what older adults want.

“Rather than earmarking limited public dollars for renovating, building and furnishing LTC homes, a portion of these funds can be better employed by supporting older Canadians and Icelanders alike to remain in their own homes, in their own beds, where they want to be,” says Dr. Sinha.

Actualizing a robust homecare system would require infusing greater flexibility into public healthcare services in both countries, to ensure the provision of high quality care within the home. This includes supports like personal care workers, physiotherapists, doctors and nurses.

“Canada and Iceland have a rich history of collaboration and share many priorities and values. This includes the fundamental importance of a robust public health system in a democratic society, one that provides equitable care to people of all ages and at all stages of life,” says Jeannette Menzies, Ambassador for Canada to Iceland.

“There is much that we can learn from each other, and much that we can achieve together, as we work to strengthen systems of care for older Canadians and older Icelanders. The results of our shared mission will certainly yield important insights for both countries and peoples.”

Learn more about the NIA and Dr. Sinha's work at Ryerson.ca/NIA. Follow us on Twitter @RyersonNIA (external link) .