Horizon says 35 per cent of N.B. hospital beds are occupied by ALC patients, up almost 10 percentage points

All 98-year-old Arthur Perry wanted for Christmas was bacon and eggs – and a nursing home bed.

The Cambridge-Narrows, New Brunswick, man has been waiting in hospital for nine months, on a list for a bed in nearby Mill Cove, N.B.

And while his family brought him breakfast with all the fixings on Dec. 25, he spent the holidays in his Oromocto Hospital room, continuing to wait.

“He very much wants to move closer to my mom,” said Shelley Poirier, Perry’s daughter. “We feel helpless that we can't do anything about it to speed up the process. It's been a very frustrating, depressing experience for all of us.”

Perry was active and mobile well into his nineties – passionate about gardening, hunting and fishing. It was a heart attack that landed him in the hospital at first. But his mobility started to deteriorate, and the hospital requested a long-term care assessment for him to determine if he should go to a nursing home.

He waited almost four months for that assessment, which Poirier believes has delayed his entrance into a home.

The Oromocto Hospital is pictured. (Source: Laura Brown/CTV News Atlantic)Well enough to be released from hospital, but not enough to go home, Perry continues to wait in limbo for a bed.

But he’s paying for it, too.

“Once a patient of the hospital is deemed medically fit, they are medically released from the hospital. So what that means is they are then charged a fee, the same fee, as I understand, to stay in the hospital as they would a nursing home. So that fee has kicked in for my dad,” said Poirier. “We've been paying for him to be there since September. We don't have an issue with that. The issue is that he doesn't have access to the same services as he would in a nursing home. So why would he be paying the same amount?”

In recent weeks, a spotlight has been on capacity issues at hospitals across N.B., with emergency departments overflowing with people needing inpatient care.

Data provided to CTV News by Horizon Health Network shows the percentage of its hospital beds occupied by alternate level of care patients (ALC) – often seniors waiting for long-term care placements – was between 25-26 per cent in 2020-2023.

Currently, it’s approximately 35 per cent.

Last week, the network said it’s working on finding placements, where possible, for those ALC patients.

Poirier created a video documenting what her father’s wait is like.

In it, he says he doesn’t “get around too much,” spending most of his time in his bed.

“This is part of the health-care system that's broken,” said Poirier. “I hate to say it but I almost believe it's because it might be viewed as a temporary problem. I'm making a fuss about my dad. My dad's 98. When my dad goes, then chances are I'll go away as well.”

Her video has been viewed more than 22,000 times since she posted it in late November. Poirier says they were hoping to bring awareness to how difficult the wait can be for many families.

In late November, there were 931 people waiting for a bed in a nursing home. Of those, 436 spent that wait in hospital. 

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