Monday, June 29, 2009

Long Term Care placement requires forward thinking

In this weekends paper, there was an article regarding Jean and Gord Vigars who live in St. Thomas, ON. Due to declining health Jean was moving to a Long Term Care facility however, there was only one available bed in the system, which meant that Gord, would being living alone for the first time in nearly 70 years. The question is, why can't they move into the same facility together??

The reason is that, although the Community Care Access Care system gives priority to couples during placement, this couple would have needed to put their names on a waiting list years ago to ensure that they could go where they wanted, together.

Until changes are made to the way that placements are assigned, I tell my clients that if you want to stay together, or even if you are alone and want to live at a specific long term care facility, you need to ask your Community Care Access placement co-ordinators how long the wait times are, to get into the home of your choosing and act now.

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