Sudbury Regional Hospital CEO Vickie Kaminski says the problems caused by alternative level of care patients (ALC) occupying hospital beds will take on a new urgency as the one-site hospital is completed.
She spoke to an audience of about 100 people at a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce president's luncheon at Bryston's on the Park in Copper Cliff Wednesday.
There are currently about 500 beds in the city's three hospital sites, and about one fifth of these beds are occupied by ALC patients who are waiting for placement in long-term care or other types of community-based care, says Kaminski.
But the one-site hospital will only have 429 beds. The operational review conducted at the hospital in 2002 recommended a new bed allocation for the one-site hospital based upon a model that had no ALC patients in the system, she says.
Hospital and other health officials are working to solve the ALC issue, says Kaminski.
The province has committed to creating 96 more long-term care beds in Greater Sudbury by 2010/11. Although the one-site hospital is due to be completed in 2009, Kaminski said she doesn't think the gap in time will be a problem.
“I think that the gap will be much shorter than that. We're going to be finishing our project by the end of 2009," she said. " They've earmarked 2010 for the new long-term care beds to be in operation.
“We do have interim beds available to us now, and Pioneer Manor will have some interim beds that they'll be able to put in place. They may not be getting the 96 beds, but they'll have capacity for interim. The government will carry on with the interim bed capacity so we don't see a shortage.”
Kaminski says she doesn't think the hospital will have to keep one of the older sites open for longer than expected, even after the one-site hospital is completed.
“That's not in our plans. If something dramatic changed though, I guess we'd have to look at all of our options.”
