Assessment bottleneck may be keeping some P.E.I. long-term care beds empty

Long-term care is facing its share of challenges on P.E.I., but staffing is not always one of them, says the CEO of P.E.I. Seniors Homes.

In fact, Jason Lee said there are 14 rooms available between Garden Home and Whisperwood Villa in Charlottetown and he has staff "ready and waiting" for people to be admitted.

Part of the issue, he said, is the delay in getting people assessed to see if their condition is suitable for long-term care. Recently, P.E.I. updated its method of assessing people living at home or seeking admission after being hospitalized, but fewer employees are now qualified to do them.

"That's, I think, one bottleneck in the system, is that we're not able to get the assessments done as quickly — and once the assessment is done, there's a considerable amount of paperwork," Lee said in an interview with Island Morning host Mitch Cormier.

"Generally from that assessment process to when you get on a list that I would see, [showing] somebody waiting to come into our home, is two weeks. So that's two more weeks of someone waiting in hospital or waiting at home."

Lee was responding to a recent report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information that suggests Prince Edward Island has the second-longest wait times for patients who need to move from the hospital to long-term care, community care, home care or other supportive housing.

Islanders waited an average of 43 days for a bed in a facility, almost twice as long as the national average of 24 days, the study said.

There are about 160 unoccupied licensed long-term care beds in public and private facilities in P.E.I., Lee told CBC News. Many couldn't be filled during various waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, as several facilities froze admissions during outbreaks. 

"Now we have to start filling up those rooms," he said.

In a recent interview, the chief operating officer of Health P.E.I. said the beds remain empty largely due to a shortage of staff — particularly registered nurses — to care for patients who would occupy those beds.

But Lee said there are other issues at play, including the new assessment model.

In May, the province switched to a system called interRAI, which it said is more reliable and widely used in Canada and around the world and "informs and guides comprehensive care and service planning."

According to Health P.E.I., there are 13.7 full-time equivalent assessors in the provincial home care program, assessing people living in their own homes to see if they should move to long-term care. 

Under the previous program, there were about 40 Health P.E.I. team members qualified to do assessments, as well as other officials who work in community and long-term care facilities.