The less time frail, elderly patients spend in hospital, the longer they live and the better their quality of life.
And since the majority of the patients who come through the doors of Health Sciences North’s (HSN) are over the age of 80, it’s important to focus the hospital’s care on their needs, said David McNeil, the hospital’s vice-president of clinical programs.
That’s why HSN’s board of directors approved a seniors’ strategy — which in a way formalizes programs that have been in place at the institution for several years — at their April 9 board meeting.
However, given the context of the province’s seniors’ care strategy, released earlier this year, it was important for Health Sciences North’s board to show its support for the concept.
“We discharge 22,000 people on an annual basis,” McNeil said.
“About 500 of those are what I would call really high-risk patients, that are subject for re-admission ... (that) are complex, and do require (a) high level of intervention.”
But getting that intervention to those who need it — whether they be in hospital, in long-term care or at home — has proven to be a challenge, not just for the hospital, but for all those who provide care to Sudbury’s senior population.
That’s why the hospital needs to better tailor services to seniors’ needs and make efforts to prevent them from being hospitalized in the first place, he said.
In a presentation to board members, he outlined a number of successful initiatives implemented at the hospital over the last few years.
“I’d like to get it so all patients that are in that category have ... an intensive follow-up in the community,” McNeil said. “We’re just trying to fill a gap right now in our community, where that service isn’t being provided.”
This includes geriatric emergency management nurses, who work with seniors in the emergency department, as well as the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), where volunteers visit with hospitalized seniors to avoid delirium.
The hospital’s emergency department long-term care outreach program, where nurses visit nursing homes to provide urgent care to residents, thus preventing hospital admission, has been quite successful, McNeil said.
The program started out with three local nursing homes and is currently in five. Health Sciences North recently received funding from the North East Local Health Integration Network to expand it to all seven nursing homes.
McNeil also outlined a number of seniors’ programs the hospital hopes to implement in the near future.
One of these initiatives is the the Seniors’ Short Term Assessment and Treatment Centre (STAT), a geriatric day hospital. In its planning stages, hospital officials referred to the program as PACE.
The plan is to have STAT in place for June, McNeil said. It will be located in vacant space at the Sudbury Outpatient Centre, previously known as the Memorial Hospital.
With STAT, frail seniors over the age of 65 would be provided with comprehensive services and supports in an attempt to prevent re-admission to hospital, as well as nursing home placement.
