The fastest way to get to an Ontario LTC is to go to the hospital first. Advocates say it’s a problem

Advocates say the fastest way to get into a long-term care home in Ontario is to go to hospital first.

The situation is particularly dire in Toronto, where the combination of a growing and aging population and a shortage of about 700 beds due to nursing home closures means many nursing homes are taking on new residents exclusively from hospitals.

It has prompted one of the two major long-term care associations in Ontario to take the unusual step of calling on the province to boost funding for other sectors ahead of the spring budget.

Ontario needs a new approach to dealing with an aging population, said Lisa Levin, CEO of Advantage Ontario, which represents the vast majority of municipal and not-for-profit nursing homes in Ontario.

“We can’t just send people to long-term care when they’re in crisis,” Levin said. “We can’t force people to go to hospitals because they can’t get long-term care any other way. We need more options.”

She points to data collected by the Canadian Institute of Health Information, which shows that more than 50 per cent of people admitted to long-term care come from hospitals, a 67 per cent increase from pre-pandemic levels.

Province urged to increase support for seniors

AdvantageAge is calling on the province to dramatically expand supports for seniors, including capital funding to vastly expand seniors’ supportive housing, as well as an additional $600 million to go toward home care.

“Many people need a little extra care and support to be able to continue to live independently in the community,” she said.

Levin said seniors’ supportive housing would be similar to retirement homes, which can be expensive and not a realistic option for many, but would be commensurate with rental income.

The organization, which represents hundreds of long-term care homes in Ontario, also wants to spend more money on those homes as the makeup of their population has changed in recent years. Two out of five long-term care residents now suffer from a psychiatric or mood disorder, Levin said.

“We need to get more resources into long-term care so that we can work with these individuals and provide them with the appropriate care and support, and we also need more options in the community so they don’t have to go into long-term care in the first place,” Levin said.

‘It’s almost impossible to get in from the community’

Levin hears stories every day from families across the province of the struggle to move a loved one into a long-term care home.

“It’s almost impossible to get in from the community,” he said.

The situation is dire at a nursing home in downtown Toronto, where about 90 percent of the residents come straight from the hospital.

Nearly 100 percent of admissions to Belmont House are from patients considered in the crisis category, which puts them at the top of the waiting list for admission to the nursing home, said Maria Elias, the home’s CEO.

That means three types of people are now getting involved: those in the hospital who can’t get adequate care at home, residents in nursing homes that are closing and those who are in crisis in the community and can’t get adequate care at home or in a retirement residence.

But very few people from that last category are coming to Belmont House, Elias said. Apart from the 90 percent coming from hospitals, most of the rest are coming due to the closure of long-term care homes.

The closure means the loss of about 700 beds in Toronto

Nearly 700 long-term care beds have been lost in Toronto due to closures over the past several years. The province banned new admissions to three- and four-bedroom wards after COVID-19 spread in nursing homes in 2020 and killed thousands of Ontarians. Some homes refused to upgrade and decided to close.

Some of them are still closing, Elias said.

The province is throwing money at this issue. It has invested in the construction and redevelopment of long-term care homes as part of a $6.4 billion plan.

The province says that as of January, 164 projects representing a total of about 26,000 new and redeveloped beds “have been completed, are under construction or have ministerial approval to begin construction,” said Stuart Osborne, a spokesman for Long-Term Care Minister Natalia Kusendova-Bashta.

The province is also spending $3.1 billion to expand home and community care and has created a community paramedicine program, under which paramedics provide some treatments permanently in the patient’s home.

Osborn said the program has already served about 85,000 people. And the province is spending about $5 billion to create positions and train thousands of people as health-care workers in long-term care homes, Osborne said.

Elias said investment is welcome and there will be some relief in three to five years when the houses are built and operational. He also said that all the ingredients are there to bring about change.

“Really, we need more of everything,” Elias said.