King promises dozens more long-term care beds before end of March

Health care was at the centre of P.E.I. Premier Dennis King's state of the province address Monday evening, and it included a promise to move long-term care patients out of hospitals and into more appropriate beds.

King, as is customary on the Island, made his address to the Rotary Club.

The premier started his address with an acknowledgement that the province had been through a difficult time in the pandemic, and he included himself in that. The Dennis King of 2024 is still feeling the impact of pandemic isolation, he said, and public speaking does not come as easily to him as it did in 2019.

"Enduring what we have endured has changed us," King said.

"It's important to recognize those feelings you have, that sense of worry, that sense of angst, that apprehension. It's not just you. It's the person beside you, it's the person in front of you, it's the person behind you."

Having said that, King went on to outline ways in which the province has come out of the pandemic well, with strong economic growth.

And he talked at length about health care.

The system needs to change, he said, and that change can be slow. But after five years in power, he said the investments his government is making are beginning to pay off.

He announced that after more than a decade of watching the number of Islanders without access to primary care — to a family physician or nurse practitioner — grow, that number would fall in February.

"About 1,000 Islanders will come off the patient registry this month. This month, February 2024, will be the first month in over a decade where our province has seen more patients come off the registry than went on," said King.

"We have much further to go but that's a good start. It's a sign that while it's taken longer than I or anyone else would have wanted that we're starting to see the benefits of the investments that we've been making."

In last spring's election campaign the Progressive Conservatives promised they would eliminate the patient registry in 24 months. But in the 10 months following the election the registry ballooned from 28,546 to 36,671, an increase of 28 per cent.

Following testimony at a legislature committee meeting two weeks ago that revealed one in seven hospital beds on P.E.I. is occupied by a long-term care patient, King said the government is taking swift action.

Having so many long-term care patients in acute care has caused trouble throughout the system. Patients, for example, can find themselves stuck in the emergency department because there is no other bed in the hospital for them.