For years, seniors on the Sunshine Coast have been living with long, unhealthy wait times for residential care spaces. Their names are put on waiting lists and some of them are warehoused for agonizing months at Sechelt/shíshálh Hospital, waiting for an opening. It’s hard on the seniors and their families, on hospital staff and on other patients, who have to deal with seniors suffering from dementia walking into their rooms on a regular basis.
It’s a crisis situation and appears to be as bad as ever.
Recently, MLA Nicholas Simons brought to light the case of Tom Morrison, an 84-year-old Gibsons man with severe dementia who has been kept at the hospital for more than nine months waiting to be transferred to a residential facility that can provide the specialized care he needs.
The hospital isn’t intended for patients like Morrison, and Simons told health minister Terry Lake in the Legislature that the senior is “always sedated and usually restrained in a chair.” He asked if the minister believed Morrison’s treatment was “justifiable.”
In his responses, and to his credit, Lake offered four times to work with Simons to resolve the concerns of the family. We hope the minister will act swiftly to end the Morrisons’ ordeal, and also take a look at the larger problem on the Sunshine Coast.
Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) acknowledged last year that there was a chronic shortage of residential care beds for seniors on the coast. In January 2015, VCH issued the first phase of its request for proposals for a new facility, calling for 15 to 25 new spaces to meet then-current demand, as well as the flexibility to expand to 125 beds.
We haven’t heard anything about VCH’s efforts since then. Proposals for two seniors’ complexes in Sechelt are in the application stage, but there is no indication that either one, if it goes forward, will be contracted by VCH to address the current residential care bed shortage.
Rather than sitting back and putting the onus on the private sector, VCH needs to show some innovation to help meet this urgent challenge. It’s not good enough to simply recognize a problem and pitch a long-term solution. What’s been lacking is an appropriate response, and it’s long overdue.
John Gleeson is the editor of the Coast Reporter, based in Sechelt.
