Frustrations have been mounting as a waitlist of seniors needing a bed in the long term care unit at the Lacombe Hospital and Care Centre grows.

A freeze on admissions has been in place at the facility since last spring when Alberta Health Services launched an investigation after Red Deer College nursing students on practicum, raised concerns about inappropriate and unprofessional care at the site.

AHS Chief Zone Officer Kerry Bales says they want to ensure they have all of the proper care standards in place before they bring in new residents.

“We’ve had to do a lot of work implementing new education for staff, implementing new procedures, making sure that we’re meeting all of the continuing care health service and accommodation standards.  That has taken a little bit of time and we felt that it was best that we didn’t also add more admissions to the site until we were confident that we had all of those other pieces in place”.

There are now 20 vacant spaces on the unit, but Bales says admissions should resume again soon.

“We’re hoping that we can resume admissions quite quickly, hopefully within the next month.  We would not be looking to fill all of the 20 vacant spaces immediately; we would want to pace those a little bit so that staff has time to make sure they are providing the best possible care to patients coming into the long term care unit”.

As a result of the concerns raised and investigation, 4 staff members were terminated.

Bales is pleased to report they’ve done some hiring for some key positions.

“As of November 14th we’ve hired a new Area Manager which will be overseeing all of the services in Lacombe and we are also in the process of just finalizing a Manager for the long term care unit itself and would hope to be announcing that shortly”.

Just recently Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ron Orr questioned Health Minister Sarah Hoffman in the legislature about the growing waitlist and admissions freeze.

https://lacombeonline.com/local/ahs-completes-review-of-lacombe-hospital-after-care-concerns-raised