REVELSTOKE – We don’t typically think of hospitals as waiting areas but that’s exactly what the Queen Victoria Hospital in Revelstoke has become for one local senior. Joy Knecht’s family says she has been living there for more than 300 days waiting for a bed at Mt. Cartier Court, a neighbouring residential care facility. Now her family is asking questions about why a patient from another community was able to take a spot in the facility while Knecht, a longtime Revelstoke resident, continues to wait.
According to her family, Knecht was admitted to hospital last October because she has dementia and was no longer able to live at home. She was already on the waiting list for a bed at Mt. Cartier Court. Her daughter Michelle Filipovic says they knew she would have to stay in hospital for a while but figured it wouldn’t me more than three months. However, for over 300 days the 86-year-old has been living in hospital waiting for a bed at Mt. Cartier Court.
Knecht is not the only one in this situation. Sydney Thompson has multiple sclerosis and says she has been waiting in hospital for a space at the same residential care facility as Knecht for a month.
After a man from Grand Forks was given a spot in Mt. Cartier Court instead of her mother, Filipovic decided to speak out.
“Instead of staying in the hospital like the residents of Revelstoke have had to do, he went straight into Mt. Cartier Court and went in front of people in line that have been here for months,” she says.
The Interior Health Authority acknowledges that Knecht’s wait time has been long but says residential care beds are not handed out on a first-come first-serve basis.
“It is possible, and this is what is happening in this situation, that someone with high risk and high urgency gets the bed before the person that may be at the top of the list, if that is the way it is being looked at.”
Bloemink explains that funded residential care beds are not reserved for people from the local community but instead open to anyone eligible around the province. She says the patient from Grand Forks was displaced by a flood at a residential care facility in that community.
“I do appreciate that this is not easy for the family that has been impacted in Revelstoke,” Bloemink says. “We know that this creates a hardship for more than the person that has been impacted in Grand Forks. We’ve had to look at the bigger picture here.”
As her long hospital stay continues, Knecht’s family can only wait and hope she does not become lost in the bigger picture.
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