by George Le Masurier | Sep 3, 2018
St. Joseph’s has transformed the third floor of its former acute care hospital into a temporary but attractive long-term care facility, until Island Health can build a promised 150 new beds in the Comox Valley. The announcement of contracts on the new beds has been delayed
An almost brand new long-term care facility will open in the Comox Valley this week. Island Health is moving 21 patients who are currently in acute care beds at the Comox Valley Hospital to Mountain View, the renamed and completely renovated third floor of the former St. Joseph’s General Hospital.
The move, which begins on Wednesday, Sept. 5, is necessary because patients needing an alternate level of care have contributed to chronic over-capacity at the one-year-old Comox Valley Hospital (CVH).
A facility planned and budgeted for 129 admitted patients has been overcapacity since it opened last October, reaching as high as 178 patients, roughly 40 of those are patients who no longer need acute care but have nowhere to go given the Comox Valley’s critical shortage of long-term care beds.
Island Health has promised up to 150 new long-term care beds for the Valley, but has yet to award contracts for them.
The Request For Proposal said contracts would be awarded on Aug. 31, but an Island Health spokesperson has told Decafnation that the health authority hasn’t finished evaluating all the proposals. It’s now expected the contracts will be awarded later this fall.
In the meantime, Michael Aikins, Administrative Officer of The Views at St. Joseph’s, said reopening and renovating space in the former hospital for the 21 patients and three respite beds has created a flurry of activity.
St. Joseph’s has had just a few weeks to transform the medical/surgical third floor into a secure and comfortable long-term care facility.
“We’re doing everything we can to create a home-like environment for our new residents,” he said. “This will be their new home, and we want to make it a good one.”
St. Joseph’s has purchased new furniture and 32-inch televisions for each room, taken out walls, repainted everything, brought in a piano and a pool table and built custom cabinetry.
The former Intensive Care Unit was gutted and turned into a bright dining area. Other room have been opened up and combined into an activity area, a bistro and a lounge that features a wall of windows facing south overlooking Baynes Sound and the Beaufort Mountains.
The contract to reopen St. Joseph’s for long-term care is only for three years, until facilities to house the promised 150 new beds can be constructed. But Aikins said St. Joseph’s is doing “everything we can” to make it a first-class facility.
“We recognize that this will be their new home,” he said. “For some, it will be their last home, so we’re trying to make it special.”
The three-year contract will create approximately 35 new jobs in nursing, housekeeping and other services.
The St. Joseph’s kitchen, located in the basement of the 100-year-old hospital building currently serves more than 100 residents of The Views and the four hospice beds. It will also provide meals for the new Mountain View residents.
by George Le Masurier | Jul 18, 2018
The former St. Joseph’s Hospital is being called back into action. Some patients in acute care beds at the Comox Valley Hospital, who are waiting for residential care beds, will move to St. Joseph’s to alleviate the new facility’s chronic overcapacity
Eleven months after the new Comox Valley Hospital opened, the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) will finally unburden its staff from chronic overcapacity.
And it will give Comox Valley family caregivers some extra opportunity for relief with three additional respite care beds.
VIHA has contracted with St. Joseph’s to open 21 residential care beds in the former acute care hospital site at the top of Comox hill. The beds will be available in September.
And the health authority said they will also convert space on the new hospital’s fourth floor, which was reserved for expansion, into a 17-bed residential care unit for mostly elderly patients who need an alternate level of care.
Norm Peters, Executive Director, Surgery, End of Life Care & Residential Care at Island Health told Decafnation that “By moving (ALC patients) to St. Joseph’s, it opens up acute care beds at the hospital for people who require acute care.”
Almost every day since the new hospital opened with 129 acute care beds, it has been dramatically overcapacity. The number of admitted patients has soared to 178 on occasion, nearly 50 percent higher than planned.
That has stressed workers at the hospital, which was budgeted for 129 patients.
FURTHER READING: Record 178 patients at CVH; Flawed planning at root of hospital’s problems
Most of the overcapacity has been due to patients in more expensive acute care beds who are waiting to transition to long-term care facilities. But the Comox Valley has had a dearth of long-term care beds for many years, so these patients have had no option but to stay in the hospital.
In fact, those in charge of designing the new hospital never planned for any ALC patients (alternate level of care). Hospital planners naively assumed that VIHA would have provided enough beds at residential care facilities such as The Views at St. Joseph’s, Glacier View Lodge or the Seniors Village.
The new 21 beds at St. Joseph’s are temporary until VIHA opens a proposed 151 new complex care beds sometime in 2020, if they can be built that fast. Contracts for those beds, spread among multiple providers, won’t be awarded until at least Aug. 31.
Michael Aikins, administrative officer for The Views at St. Joseph’s, told Decafnation that the 21 residential care beds and the three respite beds will be located on the third floor of the former acute care hospital.
While the new beds are detached from other Views patients, they will be cared for by Views staff who will follow St. Joseph’s policies.
Aikins said The Views was in the process of hiring care aides, LPN’s, housekeepers, dietary aides and will add hours in other support areas such as maintenance, payroll. They will reinforce their casual workers in all areas.
There will be crossover opportunities to maximize The Views’ resources, but the temporary ALC unit will have dedicated staff to provide day-to-day care to the residents.
St. Joseph’s will make some modest improvements to the hospital rooms that have sat vacant for nearly a year with some fresh paint, new furnishings and improved wayfinding.
St. Joseph’s Board of Directors Chair Chris Kelsey said the board is happy to help and provide support.
FURTHER READING: Island Health press release
by George Le Masurier | Mar 28, 2018
The Vancouver Island Health Authority (Island Health) board of directors will hear several presentations today from north Island residents.
By holding its March 29th meeting in Courtenay, the board has given local residents an opportunity to voice their many concerns, which this website first brought to the public’s attention in a series of articles in January.
The board’s published agenda states that 60 minutes have been set aside for public presentations, but does not specify which community applications to make a presentation have been accepted.
But we can speculate.
The board is likely to hear about the lack of long-term care beds in the Comox Valley, problems caused by overcapacity at both the Courtenay and Campbell River hospitals, long waits in the emergency department and perhaps even a plea to reactivate portions of the now-closed St. Joseph’s General Hospital to mitigate some of these issues.
Some residents may express concern about the consequences of how poorly Island Health planned their new hospitals and have neglected regional senior care services.
We may even hear a plea from the Equal Access Comox Valley group to deny The Views at St. Joseph’s any of the proposed 120 new long-term care beds — perhaps any public funding at all — because the religious-based facility does not allow Medical Assistance in Dying on its property.
FURTHER READING: No MAiD, No Contract!; Decafnation’s hospital series
Concerned citizens should not expect that board members or executives will respond to public questions or presentations at this meeting, at least in any meaningful way. Precedent indicates that if the board responds at all, it will be through written statements or private meetings.
Nearly three months after Decafnation exposed that hospital planning failures have lead to staff shortages and other problems causing low staff morale at the Comox Valley Hospital, nothing has been done to address the issues.
Frontline workers have received no acknowledgement of the problems they face or asked their input on how to resolve issues, including hospital design flaws and inefficient Island Health procedures, that have left them overworked and frustrated.
The response from hospital management and Island Health executives has been that these problems are “normal,” and will work themselves out over time.
Meanwhile, the CVH reached a new record high in overcapacity last Friday with 178 admitted patients.
That’s 49 more patients than the 129 opened beds for which the hospital is budgeted and staffed. And it’s 25 more patients than expected by 2025, when hospital planners expected CVH to reach maximum capacity of 153 admitted patients.
Emergency room staff — where reports of wait times have stretched up to eight hours — are often on the front line of some of these problems.
One Decafnation reader wrote that the experience of her husband at CVH “was appalling, total ignorance of his recent heart surgery.”
The man had a heart attack and was treated well at CVH initially, and at Royal Jubilee Hospital where he had five-vessel bypass surgery.
But when he started bleeding into the bowel from Equis after his return home and went to the CVH emergency, he waited five hours to see a physician, and then kept on a stretcher (cubicle with a curtain) in the day surgery area for eight days with no shower and forced to use a commode.
Then he was transferred to the emergency overflow area and provided with a bed, but no shower, and discharged two days later.
“Sleeping on a stretcher, not being able to shower for 10 days and having to use a commode is not acceptable care,” said our reader.
The Island Health board meeting is open to the public. It starts at 1.30 p.m. in the Crown Isle Resort ballroom located on ClubHouse Drive.
by George Le Masurier | Mar 12, 2018
The Vancouver Island Health Authority (Island Health) has reissued a Request for Proposals to add 120 new beds for patients requiring a complex level of care in the Comox Valley.
Island Health says it hopes to award contracts for the new beds in early May and expects they will open for patients sometime in 2020.
That’s good news for people needing complex care, and especially for their caregivers. The glaring and long-time shortage of complex care beds in the Comox Valley has distressed caregivers, and resulted in some horrific tragedies.
It’s also good news for Comox Valley Hospital workers. A workforce staffed for 129 admitted patients has been dealing with serious overcapacity issues — up to 170 admitted patients — since the new hospital opened in October.
Most of those 30-40 unexpected patients no longer need acute care, but remain in the hospital because of the Valley’s shortage of complex care beds.
It’s a problem that dates back many years, but surprisingly the new Comox Valley Hospital was planned as if it would never have patients needing an alternate level of care.
That strategy might have worked, or at least diminished the current problems at CVH, except Island Health was slow in issuing a Request for Proposals and awarding the contract for new or replacement beds. And then, it cancelled the RFP completely.
On Sept. 30, 2016, Island Health issued an RFP for 70 new or replacement residential care beds for the Comox Valley. The press release said contracts would be awarded in April 2017 and opened in 2019.
But, on Aug. 3, 2017, Island Health cancelled the RFP, shortly after its board of directors decided the four hospice beds located at St. Joseph’s should be moved to a secular facility that could provide Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
Tim Orr, the director of residential services for Island Health, told Decafnation that St. Joseph’s policy not to permit MAiD was one of several factors in the decision to cancel the 2016 RFP. The new RFP requires at least one proponent to provide end-of-life services including MAiD, and house six hospice beds.
FURTHER READING: Island Health RDP press release
What’s in the RFP?
The Island Health press release says the 120 new beds may be awarded to more than one proponent, and than the number of new complex care beds awarded to each proponent will be determined in the evaluation of each proposal.
“Should the RFP result in more than one successful proponent, at minimum, one of the selected proponents will be required to provide for six community hospice care beds and allow for the provision of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) on site,” the release said.
And successful proponents must provide 3.36 direct care hours per resident day, as per provincial standards.
The release also states that the “new RFP includes flexibility for greater capacity in the future, opportunities for a full spectrum of complex care including innovative models of dementia care ….”
Community reaction
The community has responded to the Island Health announcement with cautious optimism.
Our sources believe that 120 new beds will relieve the stress on the new Comox Valley Hospital, but will not provide a complex care bed for everyone in the Valley who needs one.
Because there are so many nonpaid (mostly family member) caregivers in the Valley, and because only the most in need of acute care get into the hospital, that the Valley may actually need more than 150 and closer to 200 complex care beds.
Our sources expressed disappointment that the announcement didn’t include an increase in respite beds, adult daycare programs or resources for Community Health Care, a program designed to keep people at home as long as possible.
Will St. Joseph’s apply?
The wording of the RFP press release appears to open the door for The Views at St. Joseph’s to apply for additional beds without agreeing to provide MAiD on site, which is something the Catholic church opposes on ethical grounds.
The Views at St. Joseph’s already provides publicly-funded complex care beds that are mostly occupied by patients with dementia. The Views board of directors has outlined a vision for a dementia village” similar to Hogeweyk in the Netherlands.
A private operator in Langely, B.C. just announced that it will open Canada’s first “dementia village” next year. Verve Senior Living says the project will cost patients between $6,000 to $7,500 per month, but is open to working with the B.C. government to make residence more affordable.
What’s next
Island Health will accept proposals until May 11, but does not say when the contract or contracts will be awarded. It generally takes a minimum of two years from awarding a contract to its completion.
The Island Health board of directors will meet at 1.30 p.m. on March 29 at the Crown Isle Resort ballroom. People may ask questions in advance to be answered in written form at the board meeting, or make 10-minute presentations to the board if they apply by March 15.
In other North Island Hospitals news, Dr. Jeff Beselt has resigned from his position as the Executive Medical Director for the Comox Valley Hospital and Campbell River Hospital. According to a Island Health spokesperson, Dr. Beselt stepped down to focus on his family. Island Health named Dr. Jennifer Grace, of Campbell River, the interim EMD for the region, which includes Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox and Mount Waddington/Strathcona. You can view a farewell video for Dr. Beselt here, and read reviews of Dr. Grace here.
FURTHER READING:Canada’s first “dementia village;”BC retirement home chain sold to murky Chinese ownership group
by George Le Masurier | Mar 8, 2018
The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA, or Island Health) board of directors will hold their March meeting in the Comox Valley.
It’s an opportunity for Comox Valley and Campbell River residents flummoxed by the myriad errors in planning the new hospitals to ask questions or make presentations to the directors and Island Health executives.
The board will meet from 1.30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on March 29 at the Crown Isle Resort ballroom located at 399 Clubhouse Drive, Courtenay.
With the Comox Valley Hospital still running over capacity — due in large part to the shortage of long-term care beds — citizens might ask when Island Health will re-issue the Request for Proposals to build “new or replacement” beds.
Island Health originally issued an RFP for 70 “new or replacement” beds in 2016, then abruptly withdrew it last summer after deciding to move the community’s four hospice beds to a facility not operated by a religious organization.
Citizens might also ask when Island Health will correct planning errors such as the location of landing pads for emergency transport helicopters, the lack of space for storing health records and other oversights detailed in a series of articles on Decafnation.
FURTHER READING: Online forms for questions and presentations to the Island Health board
The board will only consider questions submitted in advance using an online form available on the Island Health website.
But, curiously, the board won’t speak to those questions at the Courtenay meeting. They will answer them in written form to be distributed at the meeting and uploaded to the Island Health website.
Individuals or groups planning a presentation to the board must apply using an online form at least 14 days in advance of the meeting (a March 15 deadline).
The Island Health board includes two area directors: Anne Davis, program coordinator for the Comox Valley Transition Society; and, Claire Moglove, a retired lawyer and former Campbell River city council member.
FURTHER READING: The Decafnation series on the Comox Valley Hospital
