'Stay tuned' for details next week on new long-term care beds, says P.E.I. premier

P.E.I. Premier Dennis King told MLAs to "stay tuned for Wednesday" for more details on the government's plans to add more beds to privately run long-term care homes in the province.

King made the comment Friday in the P.E.I. Legislature, in response to questioning from the Green Party over the length of time it's taken the premier to deliver on a promise he made back in February.

During his state-of-the-province address that month, King announced 54 private long-term care beds would be added into the system 30 days after licensing is approved.

Green MLA Peter Bevan-Baker got the "stay tuned" answer in response to his questions about when that would happen, with King alluding to an announcement about the beds on April 10.

P.E.I. Premier Dennis King says an announcement about adding long-term care beds to privately run facilities is coming next week. (P.E.I. Legislative Assembly)

"Difficult challenges require creativity," King said. "[By the] middle of next week, there will be many more details about this and a longer-term plan about how we continue to expand our long-term care offering in this province."

Testimony at a recent legislature committee meeting revealed that one in every seven hospital beds on P.E.I. is occupied by a long-term care patient.

Having so many long-term care patients in acute care has caused trouble throughout the system. Patients, for example, can find themselves stuck in the emergency department because there is no other bed in the hospital for them.

"Most of these facilities, it's a handful of beds that we're adding," Health Minister Mark McLane said in the legislature Friday. "There's no one facility that's doing the majority of this expansion.

"We've talked about occupancy rates and staffing [and] this is why we're able to do this, is that we've staffed up these facilities over the last two years."

He said facilities must meet and maintain the province's minimum standards and licensing requirements "so the patients in those facilities will get the care that they need."

Long-term care beds in the province are about evenly split between private and public facilities.

But the province needs about 400 new beds by next year just to maintain the status quo, according to an internal review.

Green Party MLA Peter Bevan-Baker says the P.E.I. government is nowhere close to adding 400 beds to long-term care homes. (P.E.I. Legislative Assembly)

'Get on board and stop running them down'

Bevan-Baker said the King government is nowhere close to adding those 400 beds, and wondered whether appropriate space in the seniors homes is even available.

"No new space is being created, there's no new footprint, it's all going to be happening within the walls of these aging homes to accommodate the beds," Bevan-Baker said. "Some of the beds will be placed in areas that were formerly storage spaces — places that were never, ever designed as rooms for elderly and frail people to live in."

The Premier took exception to those remarks, saying the Green MLA was speaking unfairly about long-term care homes and their staff.

"I'm sure he didn't knock on doors … and tell everyone in the South Shore Villa that they live in some kind of crappy environment," King said. "These are wonderful people who provide wonderful first-class care for our Island seniors and families, and it's time he got on board with it and stopped running them down for it."