By Cheryl Jahn

Healthcare

Long-term care access is worsening in B.C.

Aug 27, 2025 | 3:41 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It’s a fact. We are all getting older. But the need to get help with the aging process is getting more and more challenging. There are some alarming statistics from BC’s Seniors Advocate, who says the wait list for long-term care beds has ballooned. Between 2016 and present day, the wait list for long-term care beds has gone from 2,200 to 7,200. And the wait times are stunning.

“We’ve seen an increase in the past decade from five months of waiting time,” says Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt. “Now it’s ten months on average in British Columbia. It’s less if you’re in the hospital, but certainly longer if you’re waiting in the community. And as people in Prince George and in Northern Health know, there’s a lack of investment in the number of long-term care beds.”

And, according to long-time local seniors advocate, Dawn Hemingway, the situation in Northern Health is even grimmer.

“So we have to deal with not only long-term care, which is really an important question about the wait lists and the fact that our waitlist up here in Prince George is almost 400 days.”

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Gateway Lodge has 119 long-term care beds, as well as 50 assisted living beds, where individuals only need moderate supports. But there aren’t nearly enough of those either. And the impacts on individuals is as significant as it is on institutions like the hospital.

“I think it’s important to look at what is happening in the hospital,” says Hemingway. “There’s a whole section now called Alternate Level of Care, and that’s for people who can’t be let into the community care where they were. So, let’s say there isn’t a suitable place or there isn’t suitable care. And so those people end up staying in the hospital. Eighty per cent of people in Alternate Level of Care section are seniors.”

The report sets out six recommendations and the Seniors Advocate has issued a deadline to the Province.

“We’ve asked for a response from the provincial government by October 1st, which is International Day of Older Persons, and we want to see some kind of a plan that shows that, yes, we recognize the challenges ahead. We recognize the demand that is coming and even getting greater the next decade. And here’s our plan to get there. And it’ll likely have to involve some kind of building of long-term care beds.”