Work continues to alleviate N.B. health-care pressures: 'We are making moves every day'

It’s been nearly a month since the Saint John Regional Hospital entered a Critical State Procedure and just a week since Fredericton’s Dr. Everett Chalmers was given the same status.

“We are making moves every day to alleviate the pressures on our health-care network and we will continue to do that,” said New Brunswick Social Development Minister Jill Green.

The status allows alternate-level-of-care patients to be fast tracked into long-term care homes instead of following the regular chronological order.

Government officials say it’s a response to address overcrowding within hospitals and emergency rooms and the cancellation of critical surgeries due to a lack of beds.

However, New Brunswick Nursing Home Unions president Sharon Teare has reservations.

“This is only shifting the problem,” she said. “We know that there’s close to 400 vacant beds in our sector, but we also know that over 200 of those beds remain vacant because they haven’t the staff to fill them, so simply putting seniors in a bed, that they’re not going to be able to receive the care that they need and deserve, really angers us, but now lets think about the workers?”

Teare also points to the unfairness of jumping the queue and worries that could cause more seniors to end up in hospitals if they think it will get them into a placement quicker.

“There are folks that are home and being cared for by loved ones and it’s really putting an emotional strain and a financial strain on the families that are trying to care for this loved one at home who would be suitable for a nursing home, but because the queue is being jumped, how fair is that?” she asked.

“I’ve heard folks say that to me simply in the grocery store when they look at my nursing home bag and they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re better off letting our loved one go to the hospital now because they’ll get where they need to quicker.’”

New Brunswick Medical Society president Dr. Paula Keating says Critical State Procedures do have a role in times of crisis, but they’re a temporary solution to a long-term problem.

“Our major underlying issue is the access to primary care and we need to continue working on stabilizing and then ultimately fixing our primary care system so that patients have access to good primary care in a family physician based setting and then this would reduce the demand on the emergency departments,” she said.

“Our ultimate goal is to work towards family physician lead team-based practices and care throughout the province, in every community in New Brunswick so that the appropriate profession can treat the appropriate patient for the appropriate problems.”

Keating says that work is being done behind the scenes to work towards that health-care model, including working closely with the government and a recent primary stakeholder forum that took place in Fredericton.

CTV News reached out to the Department of Social Development to get up-to-date information on the success of the Critical State Procedure so far.

“Data on how many people have received placement since the critical state criteria have been implemented is not readily available,” said Rebecca Howland, a spokesperson for the department, in an email.

“The prioritization at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital was enacted on Jan. 23. Horizon Health Network is moving forward with efforts to improve patient flow within the emergency department, minimize off-load delays and optimize acute care bed utilization. Therefore the status will be reviewed in 14 days.”

Saint John Regional Hospital is expected to be reassessed after Feb. 3.

While not in a Critical State Procedure, on Monday Vitalite’s Stella-Maris-de-Kent hospital announced it would be temporarily changing its operations to address “a shortage of medical resources,” according to a media release.

As of Monday, acute care beds will be converted to palliative and long-term care beds.

“The hospital, Stella-de-Maris, is again a program where we say, ‘Let’s let the long term care folks reside there for now, and any acute care will come back into the city at the Dumont,” said N.B. Health Minister Bruce Fitch.

Additionally, some patients currently at Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont awaiting long-term-care placement will be transferred to Stella-Maris-de-Kent.

Dr. Anick Pelletier, the assistant vice-president of Medical Affairs, said in an email to CTV News that 20 acute care beds will be part of the transition and “in 2023, the average number of acute care admissions at Stella-Maris-de-Kent Hospital was 0.56 per day.”

Additionally, the emergency room remains open to treat urgent cases in the community.

Pelletier says that it could be in effect for a few months, however, Fitch says this is not a long-term plan.

“Normal operations, that’s the million dollars question, because there are a number of other initiatives that are hopefully going to relieve some of the pressures on the emergency rooms, and this is just one of the area we are looking at in order to again make sure people are getting the right care at the right place at the right time and having a facility that is solely dedicated to long term care patients is one of the temporary measures that were put in place for now in order to alleviate that pressure on the emergency rooms,” said Fitch.

Social Development said other measures are also underway to help shorten waitlists across the province, including an additional 30 beds at Mount Saint Joseph Nursing Home in Miramichi.

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.