What is complex chronic disease?
Chronic disease is generally defined as long-term, progressive illness that requires ongoing medical care. The most common chronic diseases are cardiovascular disease, cancer, musculoskeletal diseases, diabetes, respiratory illness and neurological diseases. If, like a growing number of Ontarians, including 55% of those over age 65, you have two or more of these conditions, you are affected by complex chronic disease.
How did this happen?
Up until the early part of the 21st century, the medical community, for all the right reasons, focused on eradicating infectious diseases – and they were hugely successful. The focus then shifted to supporting life-saving and life-extending interventions among people with cancer, AIDS, diabetes, heart problems, respiratory disease and other conditions. Again, as a health care community, we have been incredibly successful. However, the by-product of our success is a population that is living longer, but living with multiple chronic diseases. As a result, there is now a disconnect between a system that is focused on saving lives and the current health care needs of the vast majority of patients. The system simply hasn’t been recallibrated to address this rapidly emerging health care challenge – complex chronic disease.
Why does it matter?
The impact of complex chronic disease is widespread and widely felt. Complex chronic disease has an obvious health impact on the individuals affected, but it also has a significant impact on their family members, their employers, health care providers who are ill-equipped to understand the complex interrelationships between diseases and a system that is not designed to care for this new kind of patient. Collectively, the economic impact on society, and more specifically on our health care system, is massive and is causing economists and health planners alike to question the sustainability of the system if fundamental changes to the organization and delivery of services are not undertaken now.
The Bridgepoint solution
At Bridgepoint Health we’re all about finding solutions. We’ve spent the past 150 years finding answers to the most pressing health care challenges of the time. As a result, we recognize, like no one else, that complex chronic disease – the next most pressing health care challenge – is upon us. And no one is better equipped to tackle this challenge than Bridgepoint.
Our primary focus is on teaching people how to live with complex chronic disease by providing individualized treatments and therapies that help to support them in self-managing their conditions so that they can live well in the community.
In 2013, we will open the new Bridgepoint Hospital. This facility will merge state-of-the-art design and technology with state-of-the-art care, creating a unique first-in-Canada organization that is equipped, physically, clinically and philosophically, to take on this most pressing health care challenge.
The new Bridgepoint Hospital will facilitate and enable the practice of specialized care for people affected by complex chronic disease in an environment of academic enquiry that is dynamic, inspiring and therapeutic.
Our National Centre of Excellence will be the new benchmark for the promotion of wellness and recovery; the connection between hospital and the community; the conduit for moving from illness to wellness; and, the bridge to the future of living well with complex chronic disease.