On Thursday, Long-Term Care Minister Paul Calandra introduced new legislation that, if passed, would allow hospitals to transfer patients waiting for a LTC home bed they prefer to be placed in a “temporary” home after staff make “reasonable efforts to obtain the patient’s consent’.

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Act 7, the More Beds, Better Care Act, authorizes certain actions to be taken — such as transferring a patient to an LTC home — without the patients’ consent if the treating clinician determines they need “an alternative level of care.” Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos, a long-term care advocate and professor at Ontario Tech University, called the legislation “morally repugnant.” “How does all this not send the direct message to the elderly that their lives do not matter?” Stamatopoulos said Friday at a news conference with the Advocacy Center for Elders and the Ontario Health Coalition. “And honestly, does it matter what they want, what they need, what’s in their best interest? Obviously, what’s important is just making sure all those beds are filled.” WATCH: Long-Term Care Minister Paul Calandra discusses proposed changes to LTC:

Ontario’s LTC Minister on Plan to Send Patients to Temporary LTC Homes to Ease Health Care Pressures

“If you’re on the long-term care waiting list, the best place to wait for long-term care is in long-term care, freeing up those acute care beds for other people who really need them,” says Ontario Long. -Care Minister Paul Calandra. Before the bill was introduced, Calandra said Thursday that the legislation would not force anyone who does not want to leave the hospital to go and would not make “any changes to the priority waiting list,” but would allow long-term care homes to be part of it. solution to improving Ontario’s hospitals — many of which are under severe pressure from staff shortages. The Long-Term Care Association of Ontario previously said the bill would not address staffing issues. “There is a challenge in acute care and long-term care is able to make a difference for the first time in generations,” Calandra said.

There are about 5,800 patients now at the hospital who could be sent to an alternative level of care if beds were available, the Ontario Hospital Association said this week. The ministry said about 40 percent of those patients are on a waiting list for long-term care. He says legislative changes could mean 200 of those patients end up in nursing homes by the end of the fall, and up to 1,300 patients within six months. Rainer Pethke, who lives in the Township of Berwick near Ottawa, says his heart sank when he heard about the bill. Pethke cares for his son, who has an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis and is in long-term care, and his 95-year-old mother, who is beginning to suffer from dementia on top of a bad hip. “My fear is that they’re going to take her to some location, lord knows where, where I can’t support my son, I can’t support her,” Pethke said. “After all, I wouldn’t even be able to support myself.” Rainer Pethke says moving his 95-year-old mother into a long-term care home — especially a for-profit facility far from home, with no choice and no family and caregivers for support — would be terrifying for her. (Submitted by Rainer Pethke) He says he wonders if he would encourage his mother to go through MAID—medical assistance in dying—if she was sent to a long-term care home she didn’t choose. “No family should have to consider MAID because of their government’s decisions to take away the option. This is just horrible,” Pethke said. As it stands, Jane Meadus, staff attorney at the Advocacy Center for the Elderly, says the legislation takes away the fundamental right to consent to health care and could have dire consequences for a patient, particularly if they are sent home unable to provide the level of care they need. Meadus says that while it’s hard to say what kind of legal action might be taken until further details are released, lawyers are already considering legal options. “I know a lot of attorneys are looking at this and are absolutely appalled at this violation of fundamental fairness and the fundamental rights of people, especially seniors and people with disabilities,” Meadus said. “It’s definitely something we would look at and we’re already talking about it.”

Bill may deter older people from seeking care, critic says

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Aging, says this legislation will affect hospitals and their ability to provide high-quality care to older patients. “I’m afraid that’s going to make it harder for people to even want to access hospital care when they know the risk is they’re actually going to be forced into a home they never, ever wanted to end up in.” said Sinha, who is also director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and University Health Network in Toronto. Sinha says that not-for-profit and municipal LTC homes generally have better outcomes and therefore have longer waiting lists, even though they represent only about a third of all homes in Ontario. The homes that have vacancies are generally for-profit or older facilities, he says, that are struggling to fill their beds or meet their occupancy goals to receive funds from the province. “This is a convenient way for homes to meet their occupancy targets because they have beds and now we have a mechanism to fill it, whether people want to go there or not,” Sinha said. Geriatrician Dr. Samir Sinha calls the recently proposed legislation to change LTC “scary”. He says it fundamentally removes people’s human right “to really make a choice about where they want to live”. (Tiffany Foxcroft/CBC) Sinha says this legislation mostly affects a population that is vulnerable, often living with dementia and unable to support themselves. Instead, he says the province could expand the number of preferred LTC homes that hospital patients could choose from one to five and prioritize collaboration between hospitals and other organizations to provide patient care within their communities. . “If we take away those rights in those situations, that’s a slippery slope to a bunch of other things that we could actually start doing to people as well,” Sinha said.

The opposition has a goal

Speaking on CBC’s Power & Politics, Calandra said he hopes to see the legislation passed no later than Sept. 1, with regulations driven by a “compelling principle” to place patients near the LTC home they prefer and their loved ones to they follow about a week later. Until then, he says he will consult with the long-term care sector. Wayne Gates, Ontario’s NDP critic for Long-Term Care, Home Care and Nursing Homes, says the legislation is terrifying for families. “Consent is not required. Families have no idea how far their loved one could move in their final years,” Gates said in a statement. The party says it questions the ability to move older people without their consent and the lack of limits on how far older people can be sent away from loved ones enshrined in the legislation. A ministry spokesman said on Friday that the government would not remove people from their communities. “The Government is making sure that patients whose doctors have said they no longer need hospital care get the right care in the right place, while ensuring they continue to stay close to their family and friends,” said Mark Nesbitt. But the NDP also says the legislation paints a “vague picture” of moving seniors without their consent, when the government must specifically rule out physically engaging a senior in performing the bill’s actions or transporting a patient. “The regulations have not been written yet, and they can be written and rewritten with the stroke of the prime minister’s pen behind closed doors,” Gates said.