Donate Now
  • What We're Working On
How can we help Canadians age at home to improve health outcomes and support a sustainable healthcare system?
Canadian Aging at Home-PLS-715x405
Scientific Study Title:
How Does Home Care Services Use Impact Downstream Healthcare Utilization and System Costs for Canada’s Aging Population? A Cross-Provincial Longitudinal Cohort Study
Start Date:
  • 2026
End Date:
  • 2030
Research Category
Tags

Why do this research?

Reason For Research

As Canada’s population ages, home care is important for helping older adults remain safely within their homes. Currently, it is not clear which mix of paid and unpaid care best reduces hospital visits, delays long-term care, and uses public resources efficiently. We also don’t know much about how this varies across provinces and population groups, making it difficult to design equitable and effective policies. This project will help us to identify the most effective home care strategies to improve outcomes and support a sustainable healthcare system to keep older adults aging safely at home to maintain their independence and quality of life – including adults living with various types of arthritis.

What will be done?

Execution of Research

We will link data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging with health records in British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick to track patterns of paid and unpaid home care use over time. We will examine how these patterns relate to hospital use, long-term care placement, and costs, and test policy scenarios to estimate their potential impact on health outcomes and system efficiency.

How are equity, diversity and inclusion addressed?

Home care is shaped by where people live, what they can afford, and their sex and gender. Women in Canada provide most unpaid care and are also more likely to need care themselves as they age. Seniors in rural areas often have less access to services, and fees or income rules can create barriers for those with lower or middle incomes. We will look at how home care works for different populations, compare how three provinces organize their systems, and test different home care investment scenarios that could help underserved seniors get the support they need.

The Research Team

Our team brings together researchers from across Canada with experience in health economics, aging, and health services research. We are working closely with an advisory group that includes provincial policymakers, seniors’ advocates, formal home care providers, long-term care representatives, and patient partners with lived experience of home care. Together, we will make sure this research answers questions that matter to older adults, families, and the people who plan and deliver care.

Principal Investigators:

Nick Bansback, MSc, PhD, Research Scientist, Health Economics, Arthritis Research Canada (University of British Columbia)

Co-investigators:

Hsu, AT

Magalhaes, S

Zhang, W

Trenaman, ML

Yu, MM

Who Funded This Research?

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Media and Infographics

Related Research

What We're Working On Right Now

Understanding how scleroderma affects people over time

People living with scleroderma experience challenges such as pain, disability, and mental health concerns, but we still don’t know much about how these problems change over time or why some people do better than others. For this research project, our goal is to improve our understanding of how scleroderma affects people’s daily lives and identify factors that may predict changes in their health.
Read More

How can we help Canadians age at home to improve health outcomes and support a sustainable healthcare system?

As Canada’s population ages, home care is important for helping older adults remain safely within their homes. Our research team is linking data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging with health records in British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick, to track patterns of paid and unpaid home care use over time.
Read More

Identifying what type of pharmacy model would be the best for supporting rural and remote communities

People living in rural and remote communities in British Columbia have more difficulties accessing services provided by community pharmacies. New innovative pharmacy models for pharmacy services in rural and remote communities have been recommended by researchers, policy makers and pharmacy associations.
Read More