Dr. Rose Zacharias, president of the Ontario Medical Association, said she hopes Ontario’s controversial Bill 7 will be implemented with compassion and flexibility toward hospital patients who may have to move to a long-term care home. Bill 7, also known as the “More Beds, Better Care Act, 2022” is the recently passed Ontario law designed to free up acute care hospital beds meaning chronic care patients could move out of the hospital and into a nursing home, on a temporary basis, whether they want to go or not. The concern is that many elderly patients in hospitals no longer need acute care and are using Alternative Level Care (ALC) beds because beds in nearby nursing homes are not readily available. The OMA president responded Thursday to a question from Sudbury.Com about whether moving patients from hospital beds could create significant problems for ALC patients who could be moved out of their communities to a long-term care home by and 150 kilometers away. Dr. Zacharias said that in times of crisis, difficult decisions will have to be made. “We, as Ontario physicians, understand and appreciate that in times of crisis in the health care system, difficult decisions are required and will be made,” said Zacharias. At the same time, he quickly added that patients “do better” when their loved ones are around. He expressed the need for understanding. “We hope that these regulations will be implemented flexibly, with compassion, with an understanding that patients do best when they are surrounded by their loved ones and their caregivers,” Zacharias said. He added that he hopes adjustments are made for patients’ cultural background, native language, faith perspective and all other aspects of patient well-being. “And so as we move forward, and at this stage of our pandemic, we want our health care system to be robust and thriving,” Zacharias said. He said that’s not the experience in Ontario right now. “These are difficult decisions. And we will always advocate for the best welfare of our patients as decisions like this are made,” he concluded. Under the provisions of Bill 7, people who refuse to be moved from their hospital beds can be charged up to $400 a day if they are deemed fit to be moved.
