$400 fees, long-range patient transfers: What you need to know about Ontario's new long-term care rules
CBC
Ontario hospital patients awaiting spots in long-term care can be moved to nursing homes not of their choosing up to 150 kilometres away, with charges of $400 per day if they refuse, the province announced Wednesday.
Starting next Wednesday, patients in southern Ontario can be moved up to 70 kilometres away, while those in northern Ontario may be moved up to 150 kilometres away, Health Minister Sylvia Jones and Long-Term Care Minister Paul Calandra said.
Beginning on Nov. 20, hospitals will be required to charge patients who have been discharged by their doctor and refuse to be moved to a home not of their choice a daily fee of $400.
Jones said discharge planners will have to have "very challenging" conversations with patients about going into a home that they do not want to go to.
"Those conversations include 'Yes, we will need to charge if you refuse to take the long-term care bed that we have found for you,"' Jones told reporters.
"That part is to, frankly, make sure that people understand a hospital bed is for an acute patient, it is not for long-term care patient."
The ministers said the policy will only affect patients who are awaiting discharge from hospital and whose preferred long term care homes do not have available spots.
The changes will be reflected in regulations for the new law, which have not yet been made public. Until Wednesday, few details had been provided on how the law would work.
The province introduced legislation last month to allow hospitals to send so-called alternate level of care patients to a long-term care home not of their choosing on a temporary basis.
The province has said there are about 1,800 of those patients currently in hospital awaiting a spot in one of their five preferred choices in a long-term care home.
The bill, which was pushed through the legislature without public hearings, has sparked outrage from seniors and advocates.
The regulations announced Wednesday are part of an effort to free up hospital beds as the health-care system grapples with temporary emergency room closures and a massive surgical backlog.
Hospital emergency departments across the province have been closed for hours or days at a time in recent months, largely due to a nursing shortage.
Calandra said the distances will be calculated based on the location of a patient's preferred home.