Terry Tilleczek, the LHIN's senior director of planning, integration and community engagement, and Cynthia Stables, the LHIN's senior corporate advisor, also participated in the interview.
Above all, Paquette, who was the director general of FedNor until recently, said she wants the people of northeastern Ontario to feel that somebody is at the table with the provincial government, representing their best interests.
Louise Paquette, the new CEO of the North East Local Health Integration Network (NE LHIN), spoke to Laurentian Media employees about her vision for the organization during an interview April 22. Photo by Heidi Ulrichsen.
“I do not want people who do not live in northern Ontario making those decisions for us. I'd rather roll up my sleeves and sit with the folks in the north, and talk it through, and find solutions, rather than having them imposed on us.”
Paquette said the LHIN's top three priorities right now are working with communities to help find solutions to the alternate level of care (ALC) patient crisis, looking at how mental health services are provided in the northeast and searching out areas where health care organizations can integrate their services.
She said the problems caused by ALC patients, or those who no longer need acute care, but continue to occupy hospital beds because they cannot find care in the community, exist across northeastern Ontario, and even across the province.
The ALC issue has hit northeastern Ontario worst because our population is older, she said.
Paquette said she understands that ALC patients are affecting the care that is provided at Sudbury Regional Hospital. The NE LHIN, including Tilleczek, who co-chairs the Sudbury ALC Steering Group, is working with the community to implement solutions to the problem, she said.
“The one-site hospital is an...acute facility,” she said.
“What we need to do is ensure that that's what it remains. To do that, you need other capacity in the community, and you also need to look at the process of how the patient is admitted and discharged, and where do they go from there.
“Through these working committees (including the Sudbury ALC Steering Group), that's exactly what they're doing right now.”
When the LHIN representatives were asked if more nursing home beds will be needed in the future, Tilleczek said a study was recently done which shows that if nothing was done differently over the next 25 years, thousands of more long-term care beds would be needed.
However, if home care were enhanced and more supportive housing was built, not as many long-term care beds would be needed, he said.
For more on this story, look to an upcoming issue of Northern Life.
