Much-needed long-term care beds sit empty

Unwise to bar admissions during minor outbreak, MPP suggests

While record numbers of Ottawa residents wait in hospital beds for long-term care, an Ottawa MPP is questioning why more than one-quarter of beds are sitting empty at the region's largest long-term care home.

Ottawa South Liberal MPP John Fraser said he was shocked to learn 120 beds were vacant at the Perley and Rideau Veterans' Health Centre at a time when local hospitals are building wards in retirement homes and hotels to cope with record numbers of patients waiting to get into long-term care.

The Ottawa Hospital is also building a temporary 40-bed emergency unit in a parking lot at the Civic campus to deal with emergency department overcrowding that is, in part, related to record numbers of patients waiting for long-term care beds.

“It struck me that we have a problem with capacity in hospitals and there are some families really struggling and we should be trying to use that capacity,” Fraser said.

Perley and Rideau, which has 450 single-bed rooms, is now admitting new residents, said spokesman Jay Innes. Its admissions were halted earlier, except for a number of weeks during the summer, because of COVID-19 outbreaks at the home. The latest outbreak involved a single staff member who was isolating at home.

In answer to a question in the

Ontario Legislature, Long-Term Care Minister Dr. Merrilee Fullerton said the province follows public health advice, which doesn't allow admissions to long-term care homes during outbreaks. But Fraser said with a single staff member isolating at home, keeping the beds empty may be causing more harm to individuals and to the health system than it is preventing.

“You have a 450-bed facility where 120 beds are empty. If one staff member has tested positive that means you can't use those 120 rooms? We need to make sure we aren't eliminating risk on one side and creating risk on another.” Ottawa's Kim West agrees.

Her mother, 91-year-old June Tooke, has been on a waiting list for long-term care for 18 months. For the past month and a half, she has been waiting from a bed at Montfort Hospital.

West, who lives near Perley and Rideau, walks her dog on nearby paths every morning. One day she began counting the empty beds she could see from the outside. She got to 40 “and I understand there are more than that.”

West, whose father was in the home, said she is frustrated that there are empty beds in single rooms at the Perley and Rideau — and maybe at other long-term care homes in the region — that people have been unable to use.

She said she understands public health rules around admissions during outbreaks, but noted that there is an outbreak on her mother's hospital floor and patients there are not in separated, single rooms.

“She is in more jeopardy there.” Fraser said he would like provincial health officials to look at the situation at Perley and Rideau and elsewhere and determine whether admissions always have to be put on hold, especially when single rooms are available.

Innes, meanwhile, said the admissions process during the pandemic is labour intensive. The home is currently admitting three residents a day, a couple of days a week, he said.

Innes said it is crucial that process be done carefully.

“Given current resources, the complexities of serving the needs of increasingly frail elderly residents and the threats posed by the COVID-19 virus, it is important that we admit new residents at a rate that is safe for everyone.”

Innes said staffing is a challenge at the home, where 120 staff members remain on leave “due to the stresses of the factors surrounding COVID-19.”

Often, during the 14-day quarantine period, he said, new residents require one-on-one staffing.

Some of the currently unoccupied beds are being used to improve infection prevention and control at the home. Perley and Rideau has created a 20-bed COVID unit to isolate any residents who may become infected and has created another 20-bed unit to quarantine residents when they are newly admitted.

There are currently more than 1,000 people on the waiting list for admission to Perley and Rideau. Admissions to the home are managed by the Champlain LHIN. The current wait in Ontario for longterm care homes offering single occupancy is between three and five years.

Innes said the home understands the frustration of families who have been waiting for a bed for their loved ones.

Thirteen residents of the home have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

“The Perley Rideau family is still wrestling with these losses but be assured that we are doing everything in our power to prevent more infections and deaths — among our residents and staff.”