The Growing Aged Population and its Healthcare Implications

This presentation addresses the significant implications of an ageing population on the healthcare sector. It begins with an overview of the issue, highlighting the rapid increase in the elderly population and its impact on healthcare demands. The presentation explores the shift from acute to chronic illness treatment, workforce shortages, and the rise in chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases and dementia. It presents stakeholder perspectives on the challenges, including high healthcare costs, lack of caregiver skills, and negative attitudes towards the elderly. The presentation also identifies opportunities such as the development of new services and employment. Furthermore, it emphasizes ethical responsibilities in aged care and offers recommendations for improved healthcare delivery, including increased education for healthcare professionals and coordinated care. The presentation concludes with a summary and references for further information.

Running head: IMPLICATIONS OF AGEING ON HEALTHCARE
IMPLICATIONS OF AGEING ON HEALTHCARE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Notes

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Slide 1:
Hi, welcome to the webinar, which is based on the current issue that is affecting the
healthcare sector. The issue at hand is the increasing population of aged individuals. The webinar
will at first provide an overview of the problem, its impact on the healthcare sector, the
perspectives of the stakeholder groups on this issue, the challenges and the opportunities
associated with the issue, ethical responsibilities associated with the issue, and finally the
webinar will provide a recommendation on the chosen issue. My name is John Smith and I am
going to address the staff of the healthcare organization Medicon on this issue.
Slide 2:
Overview of the issue
The number of aged individuals is increasing at a rapid rate. This is due to enhanced
medical technologies and medications that have increased the longevity of the general
population. The number of aged people in the United States is going to increase by 135%
between 2000 and 2050. Moreover, the aged population, who are 85 or above is going to
increase by 350% (Census.gov 2018). As a result healthcare and long-term care services will also
face a lot of pressure due to their increased demands. The implications on the healthcare
organizations will be huge and their delivery of services will also be affected. Some of these
implications will be a shift from the treatment of acute to chronic illnesses, shortage of
healthcare workers like paraprofessionals and nurses. The ageing population suffers from chronic
diseases like cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and mental diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.
As a result there will be an impact on the pattern of medication, with the focus shifting to

3IMPLICATIONS OF AGEING ON HEALTHCARE
management of the medical condition rather than curing it. This will require the healthcare
professionals to remain engaged with the elderly population for a longer time enabling them to
cope with their problems (Kirchberger et al. 2012).
Figure 1: Increase in the number of aged population by 2050 in the United States
(Source: Census.gov 2018)

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Moreover, the elderly population also suffer from a large number of disabilities
preventing them to independently carry out daily activities. Thus, there will be a lot of pressure
on the delivery of the long-term care services. Due to the increasing demand of the healthcare
workforce, there will be a shortage of such healthcare professionals (Dall et al. 2013). Moreover,
with the increasing demand of the aged population, there will be an unsustainable pressure on the
public economy, with regards to increased healthcare costs. The increase in healthcare costs will
be contributed by the following factors: increased consumption of medications by the aged
population, increase in ambulatory care, nursing home and hospital services and home care
services (Aihw.gov.au 218). Additionally, older adults are provide with Medicare
reimbursement. These Medicare reimbursement policies will in turn impact the demands for
services as well as supply of trained healthcare professionals. The elderly population suffers
from various types of cognitive impairment as well as dementia, which poses a serious concern
not only to the society but also to the healthcare system (Hansen, Hsu and Lee 2014). The next
slide will provide a description on the stakeholder perspectives on this issue.
Slide 3:
With increase in age, individuals suffer from cognitive impairment and dementia, which
are some of the debilitating medical condition that affects the aged population and results in their
inability to carry out daily activities and succumb to various injuries (Robertson, Savva and
Kenny 2013). Here I will be presenting a short summary of an interview that was carried out
with stakeholders in order to determine their views on how such debilitating mental condition of
the aged population affects the healthcare sector.

5IMPLICATIONS OF AGEING ON HEALTHCARE
Interviewer: What are your concerns with respect to the increased mental disabilities of the aged
population and how it is going to affect the healthcare sectors?
Stakeholder 1: The primary concern is the high expenditure required for providing care to such
aged individuals and the lack of necessary funding. The high expenditure associated with
dementia medications puts a lot of pressure on the healthcare sector in carrying out treatments
for such patients. Moreover, the lack of funding affects the healthcare systems, as they are unable
to develop and provide a long-term care mechanism for the aged individuals. Moreover, with the
increased reliance on informal mode of care, there is a rising issue on the inability or the
difficulties faced in measuring the economic costs associated with the care (Achterberg et al.
2013; Koch et al. 2012).
Stakeholder 2: Moreover, I think that there is lack of knowledge and skill among the caregivers
and healthcare professionals in providing car to such patients. As a result the healthcare
professional face difficulties in providing the right treatment that would enable them to achieve
the desired outcomes for their aged patients (Griffiths et al. 2013; Prorok, Horgan and Seitz
2013).
Stakeholder 3: Moreover, I think that there is a lack of awareness and as a result there is a lack
of positive attitude towards such individuals. The prominent issues related to this matter is the
lack of proper understanding and knowledge of the disease and the negative attitudes of the
healthcare professionals towards such aged individuals (Karuturi et al. 2016; Storm et al. 2014).
Slide 4:
In this slide, I will discuss about the challenges and the opportunities associated with this
issue. The challenges include effective managing of the healthcare needs of the ageing

6IMPLICATIONS OF AGEING ON HEALTHCARE
population by the healthcare sector. Moreover, with the increased demand of the healthcare
facilities, there is also an increase in demand of necessary workforce that can deal with
disabilities as well as chronic diseases. Moreover, another challenge will be an increase in
healthcare costs (Rechel et al. 2013). However, increase in demand of specialized services by the
aged population will create new opportunities for nurse practitioners and physician assistants,
particularly in long-term care settings. There will be opportunities for the development of new
services in nursing homes, long-term care facilities and even providing care through web
services. With the increase in the development of assisted living, there will be new employment
opportunities (Harrington and Heidkamp 2013).
Slide 5:
Ethical responsibilities are central in descriptions related to the care of the aged
population. The ethical responsibilities with regards to aged care involves individual client
responsibility and providing preference to the lifestyle choices of the individuals. Some of the
other ethical responsibilities include respect, commitment to the patient, competence and health
promotion. Moreover, it is the ethical responsibility of the healthcare professionals to remain up
to date on the subject of care delivery for the aged patients (Mitchell et al. 2012).
Slide 6:
This slide will provide some recommendations for this issue. These include increased
education and skill development of the healthcare professional in order to address the increased
needs of the aged population. Another way to address this growing concern is to focus on
coordinated care delivery and increased use of medications. These can be achieved by
coordination of the hospitals with the aged care systems (Fleming and Haney 2013).

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Slide 7:
We have now come to the end of the webinar. Thank you for your valued time and if you
have any queries you can directly contact me.

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Reference List
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ageing.pdf.aspx [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].
Census.gov (2018). Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Census.gov. Available at:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p95-16-1.pdf
[Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].
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