London Beds Good News

The announcement this week by the Southwest Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) of an additional 600 long term beds becoming available in London over the next few years is good news for the transformation strategy underway at Middlesex Hospital Alliance's Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital (SMGH).

"This is excellent news for SMGH. It will help to alleviate the ‘bed block' that affects all healthcare facilities in the region and will open up beds locally," Ineke Haan, Chair of the Middlesex Hospital Alliance (MHA) board of directors says.

According to Nancy Maltby-Webster, Chief Operating Officer at MHA; "This bed announcement will assist in moving long term care patients out of hospitals and into more appropriate facilities. What has been happening at all hospitals in the area, is that patients who no longer require hospital care are staying in hospital beds because there are no long-term care beds available. This creates what we call a ‘bed block.' "

"This situation gets compounded when our regional trauma centre, London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), asks the Ministry for an 1A designation," Maltby-Webster says.

1A is a designation used by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to indicate that a health care centre, such as LHSC, is experiencing an acute shortage of beds. The designation means that when a bed becomes available in the region, the 1A designated facility gets priority. "It is an emergency priority that means any spaces that open in long term care homes in the region are available first to the 1A facility," Maltby-Webster explains. For instance, when the 1A designation is active at LHSC a patient at SMGH who is at the top of the list for a bed at a long-term care home will be ‘bumped' by someone discharged from LHSC if a space opens.

If there are more long-term care beds available in London for LHSC patients, there will be fewer Strathroy patients being bumped. "Additional long-term care facility beds should take the pressure off hospitals who are keeping these patients only because there is no where appropriate for them to go," Maltby-Webster says.

"As everyone in our community must be aware, SMGH is diligently working with the Local Health Integrated Network (LHIN) to balance the budget. We are mandated to do so and we will. The staff, physicians, board and administration are all committed to this goal," Haan says.

"Our transformation strategy depends on our getting out of the long term care business and focusing on the healthcare needs in our region, such as hip and knee replacement surgery. Additional beds in the system will improve SMGH's ability to do this," Haan says.

Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital currently sees about 3000 patients per year in its inpatient units and 95,000 patients in all its outpatient programs.

Mike Mazza, CEO of the MHA says; "These numbers already indicate how the hospital is transforming. This announcement of long-term care beds supports our transformation and may assist to accelerate it."

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