Shortage of long-term care beds on P.E.I. creating 'bottleneck,' says nursing home association
'It's filling up the ER rooms, it's filling up, potentially, the surgery rooms,' chair says
While some Islanders are facing unprecedented wait times at emergency rooms, others are waiting to get out of the hospital and into a nursing home.
Vanessa Madore said her mother, Joanne Flood, spent two months in hospital while waiting for a bed in long-term care.
"It was difficult. She was in a room with sometimes four, sometimes six other people," Madore said. "With her dementia, she was quite confused. She didn't know where she was or who was in the room with her."
After two months of waiting, Flood was able to secure a bed at Beach Grove Home.
Madore's mother died earlier this month, and unfortunately the family also had to deal with long waits in the ER as her health deteriorated.
When Flood needed access to medical care in December, she spent a week in the emergency department because there were no beds available in the hospital, her daughter said.
"She did receive amazing care, but it was a long wait and you could really feel how overworked the staff was," Madore said.
The experience Madore and her mother had trying to access the province's strained health-care system is not an uncommon one.
As of August 2024, there were a total of 261 people waiting to be placed into long-term care, according to a presentation Health P.E.I. delivered to a legislative standing committee last fall.
Many of those people are waiting in hospitals, which are over capacity all across the province.
More LTC beds needed
A shortage of long-term care beds is creating a "bottleneck," said William McGuigan, chair of the Nursing Home Association of P.E.I.
"It has to go somewhere," McGuigan said. "Unfortunately it's filling up the ER rooms, it's filling up, potentially, the surgery rooms."
There are currently 1,303 long-term care beds in the province, the Department of Health and Wellness said in an emailed statement. Those beds are split between nine publicly owned homes and 10 privately owned facilities.
Health P.E.I. is expected to put out a tender for proposals to create space for an additional 175 new beds in private long-term care, the statement said.
Those new beds will have "a huge impact," McGuigan said.
"It's not going to solve all the problems," he said. "But you're definitely going to see a large number of Islanders moving out of the hospital system, which will free up some space there and move them into the appropriate health-care setting."
"It will be good for the entire health-care system."
'Patients and families waiting too long'
In general, wait times to be placed in a nursing home were lower in 2024 than they were the previous year, McGuigan said.
But that doesn't mean there isn't a long list of people still waiting.
"It's going to take about three years to even get doors open to any new builds," he said. "By the time we get there, we're probably going to need more infrastructure to meet the ever-evolving needs."
Some critics, like Green MLA Matt MacFarlane, say the government should have taken action sooner to prevent the situation that now exists.
"It's the fact that these issues were foreseeable many years ago," he said.
"We knew there was an aging population — that's obvious. We know what comes with an aging population: the need for more beds for long-term care and for nursing care."
MacFarlane added that hiring enough staff to oversee those additional beds is also part of the solution.
For Islanders like Madore who are faced with navigating the system, understanding why the the issue exists doesn't make it any easier to deal with.
"I understand that it's… a systemic problem that they don't have enough people working to get those patients into the rooms fast enough," she said.
"But it leaves families and patients waiting too long."
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With files from Laura Meader and Kerry Campbell