Ontario hospitals can't handle projected 72% increase in chronic illness: study

A new study projects that millions more Ontarians will live with major illness by 2040.

The report comes from the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and is published in collaboration with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA).

If action isn't taken now, Ontario's hospital system will not be able to cope with the influx of chronic illness cases in the next two decades, Anthony Dale, OHA president, told CBC Toronto.

"It's about a radical rethink of our health-care system and where we place a priority," he said. "[We] need to radically rethink the role of hospitals, and how to change our wider health-care system to meet that challenge head on."

The study, Projected Patterns of Illness in Ontario, forecasts that 3.1 million working age adults will be living with major illness in Ontario in 2040, up from 1.8 million in 2020, a 72.2 per cent increase. That translates to approximately one in four adults over the age of 30 living with a major illness and requiring significant hospital care — up from roughly one in eight adults in 2002.

These numbers are especially concerning given the health-care system has already seen significant challenges in recent years, said Dr. Laura Rosella, one of the study's co-authors. 

Those challenges include an ongoing staffing crisis, inconsistent surgery wait times and emergency room closures across the province.

"Everybody knows and feels how strained the health system feels right now," Rosella, an epidemiologist, told CBC Toronto. 

"We have to start thinking about new models of care and thinking about how we can deliver more care in the community, more effectively, ensuring we're reaching others in new ways, maybe ways we hadn't thought of before."

According to the study, the significant increase in chronic illness is largely due to a population that is both aging and growing at a rapid rate. 

The authors came to their findings by combining age and sex-specific demographic projections with historical chronic disease trends to model the burden of illness in the population in the future.

The number of people over 65 in the province is on track to grow by more than 60 per cent, to 4.2 million in 2040. Many of the conditions expected to see large growth in the coming years are those associated with aging, like dementia, hearing loss and osteoarthritis.

The report also indicates Ontario's population is set to grow by 36 per cent over the next two decades, with the largest increase among those aged 65 and older.

Major illnesses are also expected to increase substantially in the "working population," the study says – people between the ages of 30 and 64.