Plan to transfer people to temporary long-term care homes concerns Waterloo region paramedic chief

The Chief of Paramedic Services for the Region of Waterloo says the Ontario governments' plan to bring more stability to the healthcare system is welcome news, but he has concerns about a plan to move people to "temporary" homes while they wait for space in their preferred long-term care facility.

Stephen Van Valkenburg said a number of initiatives announced by the health minister on Thursday, including 911 models of care, are already happening in the Region of Waterloo but others may take a little longer to implement because they're new.

In particular, he hopes the changes will help with offloading delays, which have been quite an issue for local paramedics, but is a problem that started in the Greater Toronto Area 17 years ago, he said. 

"And now over the last 17 years it has spread," said Van Valkenburg. "We're seeing it all across the province. The services have never had offload delays like they are experiencing in the Region of Waterloo."

"It's definitely trending on an exponential curve up as we deal with staffing issues and capacity issues within the hospitals."

Legislation introduced

Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Thursday, her government's plan aims to hire more health professionals, free up hospital beds and reduce surgical wait lists. It comes as emergency departments across the province have closed throughout the summer for hours or days at a time, due to nursing staff shortages.

Ontario is hoping to ease health-care pressures by increasing the number of publicly-covered surgeries at private clinics, waiving the exam and registration fees for internationally trained nurses and sending patients waiting for a long-term care bed to a home not of their choosing.

That last initiative isn't something Van Valkenburg is keen on.

"I do have some concerns about transporting patients to long-term care facilities outside of this region," said Van Valkenburg.

• Are you worried your loved one might be moved from a hospital to a LTC home they didn't choose? We want to hear from you for an upcoming story. Send an email to ask@cbc.ca.

The legislation allows the province to move people, who have been occupying a hospital bed as they wait for space in their preferred long-term care facility, into a temporary long-term care home. 

"That's just going to be another strain on paramedic services if they take vehicles out of our service for long periods of time to move patients from point A to point B."

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care confirmed to CBC that 200 people who have been in hospital for six months waiting for long-term care beds will be moved within the next three months, with a total of 1,300 moved by March 2023. 

'Are we putting our seniors at risk?'

The proposed changes to long-term care also make Cathryn Hoy nervous. 

"I'm wondering if they're opening up the ward rooms again [with] four people in one room where now they are mandated only two people can be in a room. So are we putting our seniors at risk again?," said Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association.

"If we have another wave come through, which the health minister seems to think we will ... are we putting our seniors back in an environment that they're going to be at risk opening up those ward rooms? 

Hoy told CBC K-W the province needs to go to the root cause of the problem, and fix it from there, rather than fixing the symptoms.

"When they talk about moving the surgeries out into private clinics, first of all, you're going to have to build them. It's a large overhead to create surgical suites. Plus, we have a staffing crisis: both physician and nursing. So now we're going to get physicians and nurses to go work in private clinics. That's going to cost way more money, even though it's free to people," said Hoy.

"If they want to do this private system, then they need to rebuild their public system." 

Hoy says repealing Bill 124 would be more effective. That would offer appropriate pay to nurses and health-care workers and could repatriate active and retired staff who went to the United States to work.