A provincial funding boost for frontline care locally.

MPP Vic Fedeli announced just over two million dollars for the North Bay Regional Health Centre to continue the operation of a 14-bed transition unit known as Cedar Lodge.

“This is what I’ll call relief funding which allows the hospital to maintain the Cedar Lodge beds- an ideal situation to handle these family members. That is until we can do something in Trout Creek,” Fedeli says.

He says the Lady Isabella Nursing Home which was closed two years ago is going to be replaced with a 96 bed facility and the government continues to work on making that happen.

Fedeli says the government has pledged 15,000 new long term care beds and the locations of 8,000 of those beds have already been announced including at Cassellholme.

Hospital CEO Paul Heinrich says without these beds patients would be elsewhere in the hospital.

“If they’re in long term care but not in a unit like Cedar their level of care and the programming they get could be harmed if they’re in a regular room too long,” he says.

As well, he says if they’re in too long the emergency room is busier and that impacts services as people come in to the emergency room.

Heinrich says 48 patients have been in the Cedar Lodge Unit since 2017 and 100 patients in the hospital are waiting for a bed in a long term care home.

(Photo by station staff)

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