Queen's Park, November 15, 2018 - "My question is to the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. A freedom-of-information request at London Health Sciences Centre revealed that since 2014, 6,190 alternative-level-of-care patients have waited more than 100,000 days in the hospital. That’s the equivalent of almost 300 years.
These are often elderly and vulnerable people who could be discharged, but have nowhere to go. The result is so many patients being treated in the hallway that earlier this year, LHSC was forced to implement a hallway transfer protocol.
Speaker, Londoners deserve to know: What is the plan to address the shortage of beds not just in our hospitals, but in the community as well?
The problem in London is getting worse: 621 alternative-level-of-care patients were at London Health Sciences Centre already by August this year.
So far, this government’s commitment to new long-term-care beds has come without firm timelines and with little transparency. We’ve heard an announcement about flu-surge funding, but none of the funding has been allocated to London.
After a decade of Liberal cuts, my community needs stable, permanent funding for hundreds of beds. We need beds in the hospital, we need beds in transitional care and we need beds in long-term care. Will this government commit today to sustainable, long-term funding to fix London’s hallway health care crisis?"