Elderly Salmon Arm, B.C. hospital patient highlights need for more long-term care beds

Ninety-six year old Helen Willan was admitted to Shuswap Lake General Hospital with an infection on Feb.2.

The Salmon Arm, B.C., woman is ready to be discharged but there is no appropriate place for her to go.

“There is no bed for her outside of acute care in the hospital,” said Dan Meakes, Helen’s son-in-law. “At this point, there’s a shortage of beds for people with complex health needs, who are aging.

Meakes said the elderly woman should be in long-term care and not occupying an acute care bed in a hospital.

“There’s no question about that,” he told Global News. “This is not what the hospital was designed for.”

Meakes said the situation just puts more strain on already stressed health-care system, is costly for taxpayers and not fair to the elderly.

“It’s denigrating. It’s a place that is very, very busy and for someone who’s in their advanced years and so on…it’s expensive for the system, and it’s very invasive.”

According to Meakes, the family has explored private care homes for Helen but it’s not cheap.

“She put aside a little bit of money, but about three or four months down the road, the money will be gone and there’s no plan then,” he said.

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There are publicly-funded long term care homes in the area but Meakes said the wait is lengthy.

In an email to Global News, Interior Health (IH) said, “We understand it is difficult for clients waiting for a bed and their families. At this time, the waitlist for an initial placement is about four months.”

The statement went on to say “Once clients have been assessed as qualifying for long-term care placement, they identify a preferred care home and they are placed on a waitlist for that home. They are also placed on a list for the first available care bed they could go to as an interim measure. For someone who resides in Salmon Arm, they might consider interim care homes with publicly funded beds in Vernon, Armstrong, Enderby, or Revelstoke.”

But Meakes said that would separate Helen from her family.

IH also said that clients may also choose to bypass the waitlist and pay privately.  In this case, they still remain on the preferred care home list and offered a bed when one becomes available.

Meakes believes Helen’s story is just one of countless across B.C. and Canada and needs urgent attention.

“All the baby boomers can anticipate this is their future, he said. “Either you go to a retirement home that’s extremely expensive, and you buy your care until they can’t provide it and then you’re shipped to a bed in an acute hospital.”

He commends health-care staff for doing the best with the resources they have, adding this is a provincial and federal problem to solve.

“It’s about a system that’s failing to meet the needs,” he said. “We need to start and revamp that system from the bottom up.”

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