Hospital Heartbreak

It’s often said a society can be judged on how well it treats its most vulnerable. As Canadians, we prize our healthcare system. But some say that system is failing, especially the elderly. Aging patients often spend months warehoused in hospitals, waiting for a long term care bed to become available. These patients can no longer look after themselves at home and are forced to stay in hospitals until there is room in long term care. But hospitals are not the right place for patients who need assistance with everyday living.

These patients have been labelled “Bed Blockers”. And while they wait they often deteriorate, cut off from the kind of care they desperately need and taking up beds urgently needed by others. Patients who are held in hospitals are not able to take care of themselves at home, but are not able to go to long term care facilities because there are no beds. It’s estimated that 15,000 people in Canada are blocking beds, and over the next five years that number could grow to 25,000.

Janice Cox knows first hand the heartbreaking treatment that these people face. Her husband Derry spent most of his final months in a hospital, dying of dementia, because doctors told her there was no other option.

“I feel sad that we got to the point where we had to put him there, we didn’t know it was going to be like that,” said Cox. When hospital staff didn’t have time to tend to Derry’s needs, Cox says he was placed in restraints and couldn’t move. “One time we went in and he was sitting on a chair in a puddle of urine, which to me was not an indication that they were checking on him very often to see that he was alright.” Janice claims that while her husband was in hospital he wasn’t being properly fed, bathed or exercised.

Helpless, Janice and her family watched as her husband was neglected and deteriorated. “There should be another facility for him,” she said. “He’s preventing other people who need active care in the hospital from having a bed.”

Hospital care is free in Canada, but for Janice, this was not the case. Janice was put under financial pressure to move her husband to a long term care facility. But still, there were no beds available. Janice was forced to pay the same amount that it would cost to be in a long term care facility—$1,300 a month, but without the services long term care offers.

Finally, after six months, Janice’s husband was transferred to a long term care facility. Janice says the difference it made was astounding. Janice could finally see flashes of the man she loved. But the changes came too late. A few months later her husband died of pneumonia.

“The major part of the grief for me is thinking about not only what the dementia did for him, but what those six months in the hospital did to him,” said Cox. That shouldn’t have had to happen. He shouldn’t have had to go through that in the final year of his life.”

Watch 16x9 Saturday at 7pm for “Hospital Heartbreak”. Jennifer Tryon brings us the story of aging Canadians and their families trapped in healthcare limbo, frontline healthcare workers stretched to the breaking point, and a system seemingly at a loss for answers.