Some Memorial patients may be sent home

Some of the alternate level of care (ALC) patients being discharged from beds at the former Memorial Hospital site over the next six weeks may be sent back to their own homes with nursing support services.

There are currently 60 beds for ALC patients at Memorial, now known as Health Sciences North's Sudbury Outpatient Centre. However, half of those beds are due to close March 31, and the other half a year later.

North East Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) CEO Richard Joly said five of the Sudbury Outpatient Centre patients have already been discharged, and have found care in the community.

Joly said his agency is now focusing on the 25 people at the facility waiting to be placed in nursing homes.

Because there are only about 60 vacancies per month in Sudbury's 1,500 nursing home beds, it may be difficult to place the patients in the facility where they prefer to live, he said.

“Some might say 'We have six weeks left, and we only have 25 patients. It'll be easy,'” he said.

“But the question is the match. Not everyone wants to go in this home, or this home, and so on ... As a result, we probably won't be able to match everyone by March 31. Therefore, we're looking at the other programs.”

Joly said the North East CCAC has had great success with its Home Instead program, which allows patients to leave hospital with enhanced home care services.

Patients are able to access up to eight hours of home care per day, or 240 hours per month.

The North East CCAC will offer this option to some of the patients being discharged from the Sudbury Outpatient Centre.

“Perhaps some clients will say with that amount of service, I'll be able to cope until a home opens up of my first choice,” he said.

However, if this level of care isn't enough, and they aren't placed in their first choice of long-term care facility in time, the North East CCAC will suggest the patients be placed in their second, third, fourth or fifth choice instead.

“A lot of times, choice number four may open up way before number one,” Joly said.

North East CCAC staff may also suggest that families look into requesting private or semi-private rooms in their facility of choice instead of a basic room, he said.

There are longer waiting lists for basic rooms because they cost the least, Joly said.

Joe Pilon, Health Sciences North's senior vice-president, said as of Jan. 31, the hospital has stopped admitting new patients to the Sudbury Outpatient Centre unit.

He expects this to have an impact on the hospital's main site, known as the Ramsey Lake Health Centre. Already, the number of ALC patients being cared for at this site has jumped from about 50 to 60, he said.

“There's no doubt that the system is pressurized,” he said.

“The system has been pressurized for some time, hence our desire to look towards more ambulatory care, more minimally-invasive surgery that would allow us to do surgeries on a day basis or allow us to discharge patients earlier.

“All of those things that we started 12 months ago are starting to provide some gains to us now.”

Dr. Peter Zalan, the co-chair of the Sudbury ALC Steering Group, a community group which, in the past, has looked at options to deal with the ALC crisis, said in the short and the medium term, the hospital will likely continue to experience problems surrounding ALC patients.

However, he's optimistic that measures put in place to care for patients in the community will start to pay off eventually.

“Further down the line, I think it will work out,” he said. “The government is moving in the right direction. In the short term, until all of those things start to work, we may start to experience problems.”

Zalan said Denmark has been planning for the issues associated with an aging population since 1986, whereas Ontario only started down that road a few years ago.

Denmark now has extensive assisted living, home care and primary care systems, and hasn't built any new long-term care beds since the 1980s, he said.

“We know the direction we need to go,” Zalan said. “We know that if we do that, we don't need to keep warehousing people at institutions. But we've got a long way to go.”

Posted by Mark Gentili