Palliative care in Ontario, budget considerations, and visiting hospice statistics.
To view a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
For an infographic version, click here. Volunteers might find this version especially useful.
Where are we headed?
- There are going to be 9.6 million baby boomers who die in Canada by 2050.
- For reference, 160,596 military and civilian Canadians died due to WWI, Spanish flu and WWII, combined.
- Of the 9.6 million baby boomers in Canada, 2.4 million reside within Ontario as of 2017 and this will increase to 4.6 million Baby Boomers between 80 and 90 years old in Ontario by 2046.
- Of the 9.6 million baby boomers in Canada by 2046, 3.3 million will require some form of palliative/hospice care. That is 34.4% of the baby boomer population.
- 1,582,430 baby boomers will need palliative/hospice care in Ontario by 2041
- 1,026,978 will need a bed in a hospital facility,
- 371,864 of the baby boomers will require a bed in either their home, a residential hospice, retirement home, or an assisted living home
- 183,588 baby boomers will require a space in a long-term care home.
- Ontario has a reported number of 4,000 hospital palliative beds and 491 residential hospice palliative beds. Total of 4,491 reported palliative beds in Ontario
- 4,491 beds for 1.58 million clients
How much does palliative care cost to maintain?
- More than 121,000 people died in Ontario in 2021/2022, and at an ongoing average rate of 35% requiring palliative care from at least one palliative care service in their last year of life across all health sectors (such as home care, hospital care and long-term care), this would account for 42,350 deaths.
- Cost of Home Palliative Care per client: average $24,770/month.
- Estimated Cost of Hospital Palliative Care per client bed: $15,000/day, $450,000/month, $5,475,000.00/year.
- Estimated Cost of Hospice Palliative Care per client bed: $5,000 a day, $155,000/month, $1,860,000/year.
- More palliative care clients die in the community with the help of palliative care visiting hospices like NNPCN (23.5%) than with long term care facilities and hospices (11.7%).
- Cost of Personal Support Worker (PSW) per client: C$16.54 per hour, i.e. $115.78/day (7 hours).
- Cost of Private counselling per client. Average fee $105.00/hour.
- Cost of PSW + Professional Grief support per client = $121.54/hour, $850.78/day, $4,253.90/week, $17,015.60/month.
How much does NNPCN cost to serve?
- NNPCN Palliative Care and Bereavement End Clients use 3 main end-services:
- Palliative Client Support,
- Palliative Caregiver Support
- Grief Support.
- NNPCN annual budget is around $200,000.00/year
- NNPCN served 4,438 clients in 2022-2023. The cost of each client/year drops as more clients are served.
- 200,000.00 / 4438 clients = $45.07 (cost of each NNPCN client/year).
- Only $0.12 per client per day to serve nearly 4,500 clients and with minimal funding.
- To compare, the average cost of volunteer hospice services is $80/day at an annual rate of $29,200/year.
- Cost of NNPCN services per client per service: $0.02/hour.
- Cost of NNPCN 3 services per client: $11.47/month.
NNPCN operates at 0.0025% of a residential hospice / hospital’s annual budget per client.
In order to maintain these services, the NNPCN must retain at least 6 staff; currently, 5 are paid for by temporary grants which last only a year. Please help us advocate for increased funding towards visiting hospice services. Thank you.
