After months apart, senior couple only had eight days together
Grandson recounts ordeal to reunite grandparents after admission to hospital
Kornelius Funk only had eight days with her.
A mere week and a day to spend with his wife Anna before the end came.
They had been separated for nearly three months after Funk fell and was rushed to the emergency department at St. Catharines hospital.
For months his family tried to have him transferred from the Niagara Health hospital to the Extendicare long-term care home on Pelham Road in St. Catharines where Anna lived. There was room available, but the hospital insisted on a transfer to a “transitional bed” instead.
Funk’s grandson, Jesse Otta, navigated a frustrating labyrinth of meetings and phone calls to help Funk, ultimately filing a complaint with Ontario’s patient ombudsman.
Niagara Health “aggressively” tried to get Funk’s family to agree to move him somewhere other than Extendicare, he said.
Days after the ombudsman pressured Niagara Health to initiate the transfer, the 94-year-old was moved to his wife’s Extendicare room.
He died eight days later.
“To be fair, the care my grandfather received from the doctors and nurses was stellar. The care was incredible. That was never a problem,” said Otta.
“My grandfather did so much for me, I felt I had to do this for him and my grandmother. Niagara Health made this unnecessarily difficult and I don’t understand the reason why.”
In an April 3 letter to Otta, Elizabeth de Sousa, a senior investigator with the patient ombudsman, said Niagara Health “appeared to be focused on moving (Funk) to a transitional facility or home with inadequate home care.”
“The hospital did not consider the option that was best for your grandfather which would have been to move him directly to the long-term care facility,” De Sousa wrote. “If the hospital staff [had] done their due diligence in exploring this option, it is likely that
(Funk) would have been discharged from hospital weeks prior.”
De Sousa’s letter also said Niagara Health advised Otta that the hospital could not initiate a transfer to a long-term care facility while a patient is still in hospital “which is inaccurate.”
The letter said Niagara Health is in the process of revising its discharge planning policy.
Laura Farrelly, Niagara Health director of patient relations, would not discuss the specifics of Funk’s case and could not say when the revised policy would be completed, or how much Funk’s case factors into the review.
According to ombudsman data, there are issues pertaining to the transfer of patients from hospital to long-term care across Ontario.
In 2018, the patient ombudsman received 97 complaints about long-term care placements and transfers and discharges from hospitals.
“The root cause of a significant number of the complaints was miscommunication,” said an ombudsman report on the situation.
Communication failures result in a lack of trust in hospitals by patients and their families, the report said.
Farrelly, who in an interview with The Standard apologized for the Funk family’s experience, said the policy review has a focus on improving how the hospital system communicates with patients and families.
Otta launched his own patient advocacy group online called Patient Discharge Support to provide a place for people to share their stories and find help.
“Ideally, we could have someone who would be able to go to these meetings with the family. Not someone who might react emotionally, but someone who knows the system and can contribute meaningfully to those conversations,” he said.
An end to an independent life
Funk was a spry 93-year-old who liked to go for walks and used his exercise bicycle daily at home.
Ukrainian by birth, Funk was forcibly conscripted into the German army in 1944 by SS soldiers who threatened to murder his father.
“After a week of basic training, he was in the Battle of the Bulge,” Otta said.
Of the 200 men in Funk’s unit, only four survived. Otta said Funk was spared internment by the Soviet Union by a Canadian soldier who doctored his paperwork.
After the war, he moved to Canada and worked in health care in Niagara.
“He was an orderly, like a personal support worker,” Otta said.
Funk’s independence came to a crashing end when he fell on Dec. 28, 2018.
Otta said Funk was bleeding internally, and Niagara Health doctors “saved him in the nick of time and he started to stabilize.”
The damage was done, however. Funk would never walk again and would need medical care for the rest of his life.
By Jan. 23, the hospital told Otta’s aunt and his mother — who had power of attorney for Funk — it was time to transfer him.
They were told he could go to a bed in one of three transitional care homes and had five days to pick one.
“So that was a Wednesday. They gave us until the 28th to make a decision. But the homes where the beds were were closed for tours over the weekend, so there was no way we could even visit them,” Otta said.
On Jan. 30, Anna Funk, 89, in need of a higher level of care, moved into a residence at Extendicare. Otta said the home informed him Funk could move in with his wife.
At the same time, Niagara Health insisted Funk, who turned 94 on Jan. 27, had to move to a transitional bed immediately.
On Feb. 7, Otta and his mother went to hospital to discuss Funk’s case, hoping to get him transferred to Extendicare.
“We were in a room and there were eight or nine hospital administrators in there. It was really intimidating because we were surrounded,” Otta said. “We were sitting on a couch, and they were standing around us.”
Farrelly said she would not discuss the specifics of Funk’s case, but said the Niagara Health discharge team “fully explores every option” when moving a patient from the hospital to another level of care.
She would not say if Niagara Health explored moving Funk to Extendicare after the family suggested the option on Feb. 7.
She also could not say if Niagara Health policy prohibits moving a patient from hospital to longterm care.
Farrelly did say transfers to long-term care facilities are rare because wait times for beds can be months or years long. Transitional spaces for patients who no longer require acute care in a hospital are used as a stop-gap measure.
Otta said although Niagara Health continued to insist on a transfer to a transitional bed, Otta said the hospital staff committed to providing alternative solutions by Feb.11. Otta said they did follow up.
He filed a complaint with the ombudsman on Feb. 15.
‘Worse than the war’
For Funk, being separated from Anna from such a length of time was more of an ordeal than his health.
Otta brought his grandmother to the hospital to visit Funk on his birthday, and the pair saw each for a few days in late February when Anna was briefly hospitalized with pneumonia.
“A nurse came down and got him from his room and helped him get all ready so he looked great to see her,” Otta said. “I wish I could thank that nurse because she made such a big difference for them.”
Those visits aside, the parents of six children were not able to see each other after 71 years of marriage.
“He told me that being apart from her was the hardest period of his entire life,” Otta said. “He said it was worse than the war.”
Otta said the patient ombudsman investigator confirmed on March 4 that Funk could be transferred directly from the hospital to a long-term care home.
He said a Niagara Health discharge officer called him three days later to say the transfer application to Extendicare had been opened.
However, Otta did not trust the hospital and called the Local Health Integration Network, which oversees long-term care access, to confirm the file was open.
When the LHIN said it wasn’t, Otta called the ombudsman.
In her letter, De Sousa said she contacted Niagara Health, which then expedited the transfer.
On March 19, two hours after the LHIN confirmed the transfer file was open, Extendicare called Funk’s family to say a bed was ready. Two days later he moved into a room on Pelham Road with Anna.
Eight days later, Kornelius Funk died.
“I tried to focus on the fact that he had eight days,” his grandson said. “There are other people in this kind of situation who don’t have that.”