Officials at Horizon Health continue to face challenges with alternate level of care (ALC) patients in hospitals.
One-third of hospital beds continue to be occupied by ALC patients, Horizon’s board heard on Tuesday.
Dr. Stephen Bolton, the outgoing chair of the patient safety committee, said the projections are “frightening.”
“We’re going to get a handful more of long-term care beds out of this year under the two-year-late, five-year plan and none projected for 2026,” Bolton told the board during his final meeting.
“You’re all smart people. You know what’s going to happen with respect to our ALC levels, and I invite you to reflect upon our ability to continue to deliver acute care in a safe, timely fashion in that situation.”
Situation could be ‘far worse’
Board members heard that 571 patients are currently waiting for long-term care placement or access to services so they can return home.
While that is down from an all-time high of more than 650 patients in October, it is unchanged from nearly two years ago, according to Bolton.
But the outgoing board member said the situation would be far worse today if not for the efforts of Horizon to address the situation.
“You may think ‘well, you failed to improve it’ but that actually represents quite a significant degree of work to just maintain that level,” he said.
“[The CEO] and her staff have done everything human in their power to mitigate the natural increase that just comes from population increase and an aging population.”
Margaret Melanson, the health authority’s president and CEO, agrees that their efforts have allowed the health authority to “at least achieve stability.”
“The staff and physicians work ongoingly to try to obtain placements for individuals in long-term care settings, as well as try with services at home to allow seniors to move back to their own locations,” she said.
“That has been something that we’ve really tried to expedite over these past several months, and I would say that has been meeting with some success.
Board Chair Susan Harley said they have also been focused on increasing the number of family health teams to help keep people out of the hospital in the first place.
More nursing home beds needed
Meanwhile, both Bolton and Melanson agree that there needs to be an increase in the number of long-term care beds throughout New Brunswick.
During the previous meeting in March, Bolton blasted the Department of Social Development and said they have “failed miserably” to provide timely access to long-term care.
“Just take a look at our ERs. The beds are full. They’re full of patients who are admitted and waiting to go upstairs, and there’s no beds upstairs because they’re full of alternate level of care patients,” he said.
“So that emergency room, which has perhaps sufficient beds to deal with the population they serve, are actually trying to funnel all the people that walk through the door through two or three beds they’ve managed to keep free.”
