Health goals must be clear
News
Posted 1 month ago
The initiatives for a Seniors Housing Complex and the Personal Care Home (PCH) facility are two very separate needs and should not be confused nor compete with each other.
While both benefit the community, competition has developed regarding potential financial aid, as both will require regional community contributions.
Thus, we should first understand the level of needs, issues and benefits before coming to any conclusions.
The April/2010 release of the NEHA Community Health Assessment report shows that we are short approx. 42 PCH beds and our wait times for PCH beds are more than double the provincial average. This very informative report was compiled by local medical professionals and is available at the LdB Library for the public's interest. For the past 10-plus years, NEHA, local councils and more recently, the MHCC committee have lobbied to bring more PCH beds into our community.
On a personal note, we witnessed the reality that on average, 11 of the 17 Pinawa hospital beds over a period of three months were housing patients awaiting a spot in a PCH, some who had been waiting for almost a year. The majority of these people would not have qualified for seniors housing as they went straight from home to hospital. Since last March, we have further witnessed the numbers fluctuate between nine to 13 waiting either for a PCH bed or panelling. It has been perpetuating cycle.
A cost of $25 to $30 million for a PCH has been mentioned with an expected regional contribution of 10% (2.5 – 3 Million) in land /financial contributions from the region with the balance funded by the government.
Seniors housing is a more recent initiative struck by local volunteers with representation from both councils. The general concept provides an opportunity to keep local able seniors living independently longer through shared services at an affordable rate. Seniors housing will not remove the need for PCH beds, as they are two very different issues.
There are existing senior housing facilities and services currently provided through various programs that address independent living under the "aging in home" model. The demand though, for affordable housing is greater than the supply and thus, the recent lobby efforts to build more. The new senior housing model considers both mental and physical health benefits through a communal environment vs. living alone.
A cost of $4 million has been mentioned, all to come from private funding, mortgage financing and hopefully some provincial grants. There is no reason why we can't do both, but given the level of expected contributions for both, government purses are not bottomless pits and neither is ours. Thus we need to be clear on our goals.
Local studies determine a new 80 bed PCH facility would considerably reduce the dependency on the Pinawa Hospital by freeing up much needed acute care beds and lessening the call to redirect acute care patients to other hospitals because our's is full.
So it would make sense to focus on a PCH and address the most pressing need with the broader impact and benefits. This in turn could enable new Senior Housing opportunities perhaps sooner rather than later.
The efforts of all those working on these two initiatives are impressive and thanks to them, we have a solid foundation to build a plan. Now, to achieve these things we need to come together, focus, put our priorities in place, and collectively work toward our future. We owe it to our senior's who helped build what we all enjoy today, and to ourselves, for our own future.
Cindy Kellendonk
