‘Bed blockers’ cause problems for hospitals

By Topher Seguin

Known informally as “bed blockers”, alternative level of care patients or ALC for short, are stuck in Ontario hospital beds never designed for them in the first place.

Often elderly, ALC patients are admitted to the hospital after sustaining injuries from something like a fall or a stroke, and end up in the hospital for what should be a short time, but end up having to stay because there isn’t a nursing home bed available for them in the community.

Patients can often spend months waiting for a spot to open up in a retirement or nursing home, all the while taking up space in a hospital bed that could otherwise be used to treat others.

According to the Ontario Hospital Association on Oct. 31 last year, there were 4,088 ALC patients waiting in an acute care or post-acute bed and over 20,000 people waiting for a long-term care bed in Ontario, most of which were waiting in the community.

“Different people need different support,” said Laura Hare, executive director at the Alzheimer Society of Belleville-Hastings Quinte. “The whole idea is to equip families with strategies, tools, and techniques to care for the person as long as possible. The person doesn’t want to leave their home, and the caregiver doesn’t want to put them in a home, but sometimes the caregiver gets burnt out emotionally and physically, then a crisis comes along that they can’t handle and the person gets put into acute care and then later into ALC.”

A calm atmosphere is the best thing that can happen to an ALC patient, and as you can imagine, the hospital isn’t the best place for any of that, it’s a very distressing place for people that have to wait, added Hare.

For direct transfer from hospital to long-term care, the average wait time is 50 days. People waiting in hospital tend to have higher needs and take priority over the first available long-term care bed. For people waiting in the community, the wait time can be almost six months.

The shortage of beds in hospitals can lead to cancellations of planned surgery, a delay in admitting emergency patients, and transfers of existing patients between wards, which may add a day to a patient’s length of stay.

A recent OHA survey of hospitals in Toronto revealed that ALC patients occupied an average of 10 per cent of total staffed bed capacity.

“Age plays a huge role in all of this,” said Quinte Health Care’s communications director Susan Rowe. “People are definitely living longer than we’re used to. In the past, people were able to look after their elderly parents at home. Now when you’ve got people taking care of their kids and working a full-time job, things can get difficult, especially if the person needs 24 hour care.”