Gateway Lodge

By Cheryl Jahn

BC Seniors Advocate

Wait times too long: BC Seniors Advocate

Apr 2, 2026 | 3:37 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – There are a few acute care facilities for seniors in Prince George, but not nearly enough. That is according to the most recent monitor of seniors services by the BC Seniors Advocate. And the situation in Northern Health is in even more dire circumstances than the rest of British Columbia, especially in terms of wait lists to get into long-term care.

“With the rest of the province, the average is around 9 to 10 months. When we look at Northern Health, it’s over a year. It’s 369 days in Northern Health, so the average for BC is 287 days. So Northern Health is faring much worse. And we know that much of Northern Health is rural and isolated,” says Dan Levitt.

To a lesser degree, the demand for home care only increased by 16 per cent province-wide. But that carries with it its own set of challenges.

“Right now it’s not affordable for many people because if you’re living on $30,000 a year, for example, as a senior in need of one hour of home support, you have to pay $9,000 as a client contribution. On top of that, we haven’t built enough adult day programs, which is really, long-term care during the day or overnight respite care, which is short stay, long-term care.”

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With accumulated impacts of the lack of care beds and overly-expensive home care means seniors are often spending exceptionally long times in acute care hospitals. And they’re also waiting in ordinately long times for necessary surgeries.

“It’s not acceptable for seniors to be waiting for surgeries. When you look in Northern Health right now, cataract is 11.4 weeks. I look at knee replacements, it’s, 53.7 weeks. It’s over a year. And this is on average, to wait for a knee replacement. Hip replacement, 31.3. And last year, Northern Health was actually the lowest in terms of the proportion of surgeries completed.”

And the biggest issue facing seniors care right now is that the Province has fallen well behind in keeping pace with the growing demand. And the demand is not lessening with an increasingly aging population.

“Around the province of BC, we’re not keeping up with the pace of growth of the number of seniors. Currently, one in five British Columbians, 20 per cent, are over 65. In a decade from now, it’ll be one in four, when 25 percent of us are over 65. We have a decade now to get this right, to build the investment. There’s no way out of this. This isn’t a ‘nice to have.’ There’s something we have to do.”

He says what’s needed is for government to think outside the box when it comes to seniors care delivery.