Ontario moved 424 people into nursing homes they didn't choose

More than 400 patients have been forced into Ontario nursing homes they did not want to go to and the rate of those moves is increasing, The Canadian Press has learned.

There were 424 discharged patients who moved to a nursing home not of their choosing out of 20,261 patients who were moved to long-term care homes since a law allowing such moves came into force in late 2022, the long-term care minister's office said.

About one-third of those patients were moved in just February and March, the last two months for which data was available.

And one woman faces a $26,000 hospital charge under the provisions of the law that her family doesn't plan to pay.

In the summer of 2022, a few months after Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives won a landslide victory in the election, the government introduced Bill 7 in an effort to open up much-needed hospital space. The province passed the bill into law within days, bypassing a study at committee, which sparked a firestorm of anger from the opposition and seniors.

The law is aimed at so-called alternate level of care patients who are discharged from hospital but need a long-term care bed and don't have one yet. Hospitals can send those patients to nursing homes not of their choosing up to 70 kilometres away, or up to 150 kilometres away in northern Ontario, if spaces open up there first.

If patients flat out refuse those transfers, hospitals can charge them $400 a day under the law.

Critics have said the vast majority of people in that situation would feel threatened enough by the prospect of massive fees that they would comply.

The Ministry of Health has said seven people across the province have been charged the $400-a-day penalty. It refuses to disclose the total amounts patients are being asked to pay, but at least one family has received a $26,000 bill.

Ruth Poupard and her daughter, Michele Campeau, are refusing to pay the bill and experts say it's unclear what will happen next.

"It's never gonna happen," Campeau said. "I will not stop until this bill is dead."

The southwestern Ontario family could face a lawsuit, collection agency — or nothing — by ignoring the hospital bill, experts say.

Poupard, who has lived through cancer, a heart valve transplant and progressing dementia, began her most recent health-care journey a few days after Christmas. The 83-year-old fell at home, where she lived with Campeau, who is also her power of attorney. Poupard broke her hip and needed emergency surgery.

She moved to Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare in Windsor, Ont., in February for rehabilitation. Her attending doctor discharged Poupard on Feb. 21, but she needed more care than her children could provide. The family decided on long-term care and made a list of five nursing homes Poupard preferred.