An advocate for seniors is sounding the alarm after the latest numbers show the waitlist for a nursing home in New Brunswick has surpassed 1,000.
Cecile Cassista, executive director of the Coalition for Seniors New Brunswick, has been tracking the numbers since 2017.
She said the latest numbers are a clear indication of a broken long-term-care system.
“This is the highest we’ve been, so it is shocking.”
The document shared by Cassista shows the number of people “awaiting placement” by the Department of Social Development as of June 30 was 1,044, including 513 who are waiting in hospital.
As a longtime advocate for seniors and nursing home residents, Cassista said she knows seniors and their families are “very frustrated” to be waiting in hospital environments until nursing homes have room for them.
Cecile Cassista of the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights says the number of seniors taking up hospital beds in New Brunswick while waiting for spots in nursing homes or for home care is the highest it’s been since 2017.
“The longer people languish in a hospital, their health condition changes,” she said. “It is upsetting.”
“I know that people don’t want to be in the hospital, they don’t want to make that their home, but that’s the case because we have a broken system.”
Compared to waitlist numbers at the end of May, the number of people in hospital waiting for a nursing home placement has increased by 71.
The Moncton region has the highest number of people waiting, at 285, including 133 in hospital.
A focus on more beds
CBC News contacted the Department of Social Development, but no one was made available for an interview.
According to a news release from Social Development on June 10, celebrating nursing home week, there are 76 nursing homes in New Brunswick, providing 5,223 beds.
The growing waitlist comes as no surprise to Suzanne Dupuis-Blanchard, a professor at the University of Moncton nursing school who researches healthy aging.
“We have to remember that these are our people,” she said. “It just breaks my heart to think that someone who [has been] medically discharged is still in a hospital environment.”
Dupuis-Blanchard said seniors who need nursing home care and get stuck waiting at home for weeks or even months often begin to feel invisible to an already overwhelmed system.
Much of Dupuis-Blanchard’s research focuses on alternatives to nursing homes for healthy aging. She said New Brunswick needs to look at other ways to help its aging population stay home longer.
“Having activities offered in your local community … that’s how we keep older adults as independent as possible,” she said. “We want to optimize their heath — no matter the age.”
She added the New Brunswick population has one of the highest proportions of older adults, with 22 per cent being over 65, compared with 18 per cent nationally.
‘Tough discussions’ need to happen
Dupuis-Blanchard said it’s important to have the tough discussions about aging and other heath decisions with family and friends a lot earlier.
“It’s discussions that, most of the time, don’t happen until there’s a crisis,” she said. “And then, decisions are made, and people are unhappy about the decisions because they didn’t really want to think about that.”
Cassista hopes the provincial election this fall will generate a larger discussion about long-term care in New Brunswick.
“I hope that the public don’t wait until it hits their pocket, that they speak out earlier,” she said.