As per Statistics Canada, Canadians are generally living longer and healthier lives. However, with an increasing life expectancy, a growing elderly population, a more informed and health savvy youth population and a limited number of accessible healthcare services, Canadians are struggling to meet their healthcare needs. In 2021, nearly 2.5 million Canadians did not receive care for conditions that they felt required medical attention and those who did receive care reported difficulties accessing care for various reasons including lengthy wait times (StatsCan, 2023).
In addition to a growing need for physical health conditions, since 2015, the need for mental health services has been steadily increasing. In 2022, over 3.4 million Canadians over the age of 12 were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and over 3.1 million people with a mood disorder (StatsCan, 2023). Although these numbers are quite alarming, in reality they may be even higher as they do not account for individuals who did not receive care. In 2023, 2 out of 5 Canadian children and youth reported not having accessed care for a mental health condition that they felt required care. The top five barriers included long wait times, feeling overwhelmed or uncomfortable with accessing care, limited choices and limited appointment hours, fear of what others would think of them and being misunderstood or dismissed (CIHI, 2023).
The problem of access to care for homecare disproportionately impacts the elderly population, however, overall, access to care in Canada disproportionally impacts not only our elderly population but also their caregivers and loved ones and extends to youth and persons from equity-deserving groups and is especially true for mental health, cognitive and functional services. “Wait times to access publicly funded mental health care continue to grow in many countries. Despite the realities of service limitations in health care systems, we are seeing escalating demand from multiple sources for immediate access to mental health care […]— along with growing discontent when institutions fall short of expectations. This poses considerable challenges for [..] service providers and administrators, who must determine how to respond to several complex and vexing questions.” (Yuen, Arcuri, Cornish, Steward, 2022)*
The idea of Clinique de santé inclusive Vivago inc. was born from this conundrum of how to optimize access to care and the work that this author has undertaken over many years to address the issue of healthcare accessibility at McGill University through innovative methodology grounded and informed by best practices in stepped-care, client-and-family centered-care as well as interdisciplinarity and inclusive and accessible care. Now, this author aims to provide an innovative way of responding to healthcare needs in the private sector by aligning service offerings with the latest evidence in stepped-care along with best practices in system optimization in a format that is available to broader communities, outside of the post-secondary institution.
References:
Canadian Institute for Health Information. CIHI. (2024, May 2). https://www.cihi.ca/en
Statistics Canada (2023). Statistics Canada: Canada’s National Statistical Agency / Statistique Canada : Organisme Statistique National du Canada. Government of Canada. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/
Yuen, Sandra & Arcuri, Giovanni & Cornish, Peter & Stewart, Don. (2022). What Are We Waiting For? Addressing Wait Times in Post-Secondary in Student Mental Health Care. (book chapter)
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