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Continuing Care Ottawa

Communities that anticipate changing needs

Continuing care retirement communities in Ottawa offer care on different levels that can include independent living to assisted living, as well as long-term care or memory care facilities. There are advantages of a home with a continuum of care. Homes offer a diverse approach to care, where some seniors may be entirely independent, while others in the same community may need more dedicated care like catheter and other tube care, while still others require round-the-clock monitoring.

The advantages of continuing are

A continuing care retirement community offers a number of important advantages:

• This anticipates the changing needs of seniors: it offers various levels of care under one roof (or at least in one location). If care requirements change, the senior in residence finds that they don't have to go elsewhere to get the care they need.
• Stay in one place: one of the great stressors for retirement home residents (and an acknowledged health detriment) is the initial move, a great disruption to someone who may have lived in one home for decades. To have to move again later can greatly exacerbate health problems.
• Couples can stay together. This is another great advantage of offering a continuum of care all in one location. We have heard many stories of couples moving into a continuing care retirement community because (for example) one spouse suffers from dementia and the other wants to be near him or her, and no longer wants to remain alone in the family home. Living in a community with a variety of other people with various care requirements, people make new friends and find new joy in life, living in a vibrant community of peers.
• Intergenerational and integrative. New developments in Ottawa and elsewhere offer people as young as 50 the opportunity to move into a planned community where some mundane tasks may be taken care of as de rigueur to the life of the community. As part of the residence or community, though, care may be available through various means that allow community members to age in place. This type of community may be thought of as a community ranging from active lifestyle to assisted living (and beyond). In any case, this integrated approach takes the idea of continued care to a new, very progressive level that meets the changing needs of the aging population in the Region.

Definitions of continuing care in context

The definition we are working with above is one used by some Canadians, but perhaps more often in the United States. It does fit with many retirement communities in Canada that do indeed offer a full continuum of care for seniors. There is no more fitting term to describe these types of communities that offer a full range of care, all in one facility.

Others in the senior care industry consider continuing care to be synonymous with long term care; that is, when someone is in LTC they need care on a continual basis.

Complex continuing care is a progressive-minded approach to care for seniors and others, with an integrated approach to providing care for medically complex clients, including seniors. By definition, complex care may mean that they have a chronic condition exacerbated by a separate health incident (such as a heart attack). This is the official definition used by health care authorities like the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

There are a number of facilities in the Ottawa Region that offer this approach to care. In fact, some of these are associated with retirement communities and villages.

See the difficulties associated with this and other definitions, in our glossary of senior care.