BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
Greater Sudbury will likely get five more interim long-term care beds sometime in the near future, bringing the total up to 30.
The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care made the decision Dec. 2 after meeting with a working group made up of representatives from Sudbury Regional Hospital, the Manitoulin-Sudbury Community Care Access Centre and local long-term care facilities.
"The ministry had indicated they were able to get funding for an additional five long-term care beds at Pioneer Manor," says Sudbury Regional Hospital senior vice-president Joe Pilon, who attended the meeting.
"They didn't commit to a date, but they felt it could happen quickly. So I'm assuming it will happen before Christmas."
During the discussions, the group also decided not to send people out of the community for about 10 days surrounding the Christmas and New Years holidays, says Pilon.
"It's very important that people aren't being transferred during Christmas...Just those emotional ties to family at Christmas are especially important," he says.
Sudbury has been under a crisis 1A designation since April 2004, meaning that people needing a long-term care bed can be transferred to Espanola, Manitoulin Island or Parry Sound.
The hospital is also overflowing with Alternative Level of Care (ALC) patients waiting to be transferred into long-term or convalescent care, which has severely affected its ability to provide acute care.
The 15 long-term care beds that were added earlier this fall have made things better at the hospital, admits Pilon.
But the hospital administrator stresses that these are only short-term solutions to a big problem in our community.
We need to find a way to make sure local long-term care beds are available to everyone who needs them, he says.
"We don't want to have to send people out of the community, but we also don't want to have to cancel surgery or have people waiting on stretchers in the emergency room," he says.
"They're tying up beds that are meant for acute patients because they don't have access to beds in the community."
Representatives from the City of Greater Sudbury met separately with Health and Long-Term Care Minister George Smitherman last week to discuss the long-term care crisis.
Smitherman asked the city to work with community partners, including the hospital, to come up with a made-in-Sudbury plan to solve the problem.
"I'm hoping that the group will identify the demands for long-term care, and what services are required to meet those demands," says Pilon.
"We believe that our community is truly under capacity in terms of our long-term care beds, and the supportive care that's required to keep seniors in their home."
