Long-term planning required to ease ER overcrowding

We can’t even blame the hospital’s administration on this one. As of yesterday morning, more than 50 patients were occupying the 31-stretcher capacity ER. Rooms some of these patients would normally move to for recuperation are still being occupied by patients who have to be placed in a long-term care facility, be it for non-autonomous seniors or the mentally ill. In fact, some patients occupying a room at LGH have been waiting for a spot in a long-term care facility for more than six months.

Couple that tenuous care situation following Easter weekend, a wet snowfall this past week and slippery conditions and —presto! — you have a recipe for overcrowding.

The lack of long-term and chronic-care beds in the West Island is no secret. The rapid aging of the population, the West Island’s high — and growing — number of senior citizens, the dearth of long-term care facilities is a concern that should’ve been addressed long ago.

These long-term patients should be housed elsewhere, but that’s not the hospital’s fault. No, because these people have no place to go, the hospital takes care of them on a daily basis, and robbing ER patients of attention they could be getting from a doctor or a nurse who is instead administering care to a patient who’s probably not ever going to get better.

The patch-job philosophy the government likes to use for potholes shouldn’t be trotted out to solve the aging-demographic issue. Someone needs to be addressing the needs of every one of these patients who sits in a hospital room, which could otherwise be used to help victim of an accident recover. The needs are great, and consecutive governments have failed to acknowledge it. Reactivity, rather than pro-activity, will be the Quebec government’s legacy for generations to come.

Another notion gaining steam is the lack of family doctors — with whom regular checkups might nip some problems that become emergencies down the road. The lack of available family doctors might also have something to do Lakeshore now asking people to avoid the ER patients and instead head to CLSCs and private clinics.

Maybe the idea of converting the Ste. Anne’s Veterans Hospital to a chronic-care facility that also admits civilians is one whose time has come. It’s got the room, and the experience of taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Of course, the facility, now run by Ottawa, would have to be transferred to the province, which has jurisdiction over health-care for non-military people. The issue was in the news a decade ago but has since been dropped and so have any transfer negotiations.

Above all, the government is badly in need of some real vision, and some real solutions. It’s pothole season, and we’ve already seen more bad patch-up jobs than we care to.ꆱ