The issue of how people are treated with their medications.... Geriatric medicine doesn't carry a lot of panache. And even though many of the provinces have given extra funding for people who take on older patients, nonetheless, doctors do not encourage it. My own brother is a GP, and he tells me it's not a choice.
So unfortunately the interaction of drugs in an older, smaller body are not well understood by the average practitioner. Therefore, do we hope we're going to get more geriatricians, or do we want to make sure every medical graduate has that understanding of how drugs play with comorbidities within an older body?
We don't have that right now. There is a real fear when people go into hospital that they're not going to be able to tolerate the care they get. And this is the stage we're at because there is a lack of an overall focus on making sure that older people are well treated within our hospital system. What we do have are erstwhile plans to make age-friendly hospitals, for example here in Ottawa. They have to consciously institute a new program to do that. Why? Because it's not happening yet.