THUNDER BAY – The president and CEO at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre says she is hopeful with the information that's being shared around the government’s five-point health-care plan announced on Aug. 18.
But Dr Rhonda Crocker-Ellacott wants to see more before giving a full endorsement
“We still need to see the devil in the detail, certainly, but it looks very promising that there's some really good things that should really help to improve flow within the system and support capacity while really supporting our health care workforce,” she said.
“Because our healthcare workforce is really pivotal and foundational to anything that we're going to do around pandemic recovery.”
Crocker-Ellacott says one of the things she wants highlighted is providing the right care in the right place at the right time, which believes Bill 7 will do
“It will really support ensuring that patients who are waiting for other levels of care, in particular long-term care, still have the opportunity to have choice while they would potentially see themselves waiting in a long-term care facility versus a hospital,” she said.
“So for our hospital, for example, we have about 89 patients who are alternative level of care waiting as of today. Even if a small fraction of those individuals have the opportunity to wait in a long-term care home instead of in an acute care facility it could improve our system flow, improve access to acute care beds so we think it's a bit of a win-win in that acute care facilities aren't really designed to support long term care patients and their needs.”
Jules Tupker, chair of the Thunder Bay Health Coalition, says the move to potentially having patients wait in a long-term care facility not of their choice is another move towards privatization.
“They're going to boost, the for-profit long-term care homes by filling their homes with patients with residents and seniors, seniors who deserve to be looked after properly. They're going to be kicked out of the hospital now to fill those homes,” he said.
“And we don't even know if they're going to be able to fill the homes locally, right? We have 6 long-term care homes here, long-term care facilities. But, if they aren't full already and they're going to make more room than the hospitals, they're going to kick them out. Maybe they're going to send them to Dryden or to Sault Ste. Marie. We don't know. They haven't said they're not, we just don't know.”
Another part of the plan mentions bringing in 6,000 more healthcare workers to the province with 400 being brought to the Northwest region.
Crocker-Ellacot says that the TBRHSC’s emergency department isn't facing the same physician shortages as other smaller centres at this point in time and she’s not sure if that'll really have a significant impact on them.
"That being said, anything to help support additional nurses, nurse practitioners, externs, any of those things that will help an emergency department are always welcome,“ she said.
