Population Aging and the Continuum of Older Adult Care in Manitoba

Older adults (people 65+ years old) are the main users of home care services and nursing homes (called personal care homes, or PCHs, in Manitoba), and the number of older adults living in Manitoba will soon increase considerably. Most Canadian provinces have expanded their care options for older adults, and Manitoba initiated an Aging in Place program in 2004. As one part of this program, supportive housing was created as an alternate to PCH use so that some people can continue living in the community.

To date however, Manitoba has not developed a tool that differentiates supportive housing users from PCH users. This tool is important to ensure that people receive the right type of care based on their needs. Also, a new strategy is required to more clearly define PCH residents’ needs so that providers can develop better care plans for these individuals. Knowledge from this tool can also be used to help understand the capacity of supportive housing to offset PCH use, now and in the future.

This research was conducted at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP), Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, and provides evidence about the continuum of home care, supportive housing, and PCH care in Manitoba. Using a combination of clinical data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and health care use data from the Population Health Research Data Repository (Repository)  housed at MCHP, the objectives of this research were to:

• develop a tool for placing people into either supportive housing or PCH care and a second tool to
  more clearly describe PCH residents’ needs.
• use this new evidence to estimate the capacity for supportive housing to offset current and future
  PCH use.