Ontario Long-Term Care Minister Stan Cho's office says nearly 300 people in Ontario have been moved from hospitals to long-term care homes not of their choosing under a law the government implemented a little over a year ago.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Nearly 300 people in Ontario have been moved from hospitals to long-term care homes not of their choosing under a law the government implemented a little over a year ago.
The law can see those patients placed in homes up to 70 kilometres away – or 150 kilometres if they are in northern Ontario – without their consent and requires hospitals to charge them $400 a day if they refuse the transfer.
It is aimed at moving so-called alternate level of care patients, who can be discharged from hospital but need a long-term care bed and don’t yet have one in order to free up hospital space.
If there are no spaces available in long-term care homes a patient has put on their preferred list, they can instead be transferred to a home selected by a placement co-ordinator at the hospital.
The Ministry of Long-Term Care has not previously publicly disclosed the numbers of patients moved under those new rules, but Long-Term Care Minister Stan Cho’s office now confirms to The Canadian Press that 293 alternate level of care patients were admitted to homes they didn’t choose between September 2022 and January of this year.
That represents about 1.7 per cent of all of the alternate level of care patients discharged from public hospitals to long-term care homes in that time period, Cho’s office said.
Cho said he wants people to be able to age comfortably in long-term care homes, not in hospital beds.
“We need to get people who belong in a long-term care home out of the hospitals, into the home and what that’s doing is leaving hospitals freer for that acute care,” he said Wednesday in an interview.
“Let’s have the appropriate care for the right place, the right person.”
Cho said he has not been made aware of any fines being issued under the law.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the threat of being fined $400 a day is likely enough to make most people acquiesce.
“They’d be afraid, frankly,” she said. “Running this kind of program on fear is a terrible option and it was always going to result in people being forced to leave their communities.”