Within the next two weeks, work will start on moving the roughly 150 patients stuck in beds at Central Zone hospitals into a “community transition unit” at the Holiday Inn in Dartmouth.
“They could be on a waitlist for any nursing home in the province. Or, to go home to the home with homecare supports,” Josie Ryan, the executive director of long-term care at Northwood, said.
The patients have been approved for discharge from hospitals but need to transition into the appropriate community care.
However, health services like long-term care facilities are operating at reduced capacity because of COVID-19, further exacerbating wait times for admission into these facilities.
Capacity at Northwood Halifax has been reduced by 100 beds “and that’s enabled us to have private rooms with the exception of 12 rooms in the whole facility,” Ryan said.
Since the pandemic began, nursing homes across Canada have called on governments to overhaul the long-term care system. There have been calls to invest in expanding single-room occupancy.
That’s a challenge that Northwood in Halifax was forced to reckon with during the first wave of COVID-19.
Work is underway to ensure the two hotel floors that will serve as the community transition unit will meet public health and infection control standards.
“If it’s anything like the past project that we were involved in, the public health did a great job of using one of our floors as a nursing unit. Which is basically what they’re going to do. From what I can understand they’re going to have 50, or more, residents,” Ron Miller, the general manager of the Holiday Inn in Dartmouth, said.
The health authority says the estimated daily cost per person in the community transition unit is $390. The daily amount for a hospital is around $1,200.
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