New St. Mary’s hospital program helps patients recover at home

St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener is starting a new program to help patients who no longer need hospital care recover at home.

The Hospital to Home program will help free up hospital beds for patients who need urgent and complex hospital care. It helps address a long-standing problem in hospitals, where patients occupy a hospital bed even though they don’t need the intense services the hospital provides, but are too weak or ill to go home on their own without supports.

“Our goal is to get each patient back home as quickly and safely as possible after they receive the acute care that they need, but that’s not always feasible,” says Brandon Douglas, vicepresident of clinical services at St. Mary’s.

“Often, we are unable to discharge a patient because they do not yet have the services and support that they need to be at home safely. By remaining in our care, this means that an acute bed is not available for someone who needs it.”

Until now, a patient being discharged from St. Mary’s who needed home care had to make arrangements through Home and Community Care (formerly the Community Care Access Centre), a process that typically takes seven to nine days. Now, patients will be able to be discharged as soon as they no longer need acute care, and get home care immediately through the Hospital to Home program.

The program provides home care for up to 21 days and acts as a bridge for people who might need longer-term communitybased services beyond those three weeks. “It allows them to do their waiting at home with supports, rather than sitting in hospital blocking a bed,” Douglas said.

The program expects to serve about 20 to 30 patients a month, freeing up the equivalent of three beds a year, and reducing waits for patients who are waiting in the emergency department for a hospital bed to open up, he said.

Delivering these supports at home provides “patient-centred care and also helps ease pressures on the overburdened acute care system,” says Danielle Holler, regional director of Bayshore Health Care, which is delivering the program with St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s is part of St. Joseph’s Health System, and this program is a step toward bringing St. Joseph’s Home Care services to Waterloo Region, a news release from the hospital said.

The Hospital to Home program will help free up hospital beds for patients who need urgent and complex hospital care