Long-term care beds to be added to 5 nursing homes

The 100 new long-term care beds announced by the province last spring will be spread across five communities, the government said in an update on Wednesday.

The beds will be added to private nursing homes in Charlottetown, Summerside, Stratford, Belfast and Wellington.

The province had hoped to have half the beds ready by Oct. 1, but Minister of Health and Wellness Robert Mitchell says the tender process took longer than expected.

"Obviously I would love to have residents in those beds October 1. We weren't able to meet that, so here we are today, we're early November, some of the beds are ready to go, some ... do need a little bit of infrastructure to be put in place," Mitchell said.

He said the province will still meet its commitment to have all the beds in place within the two year time frame it promised.

2 phases

The province says 34beds are ready now with plans for another 16 at The Mount in Charlottetown to be ready early in the new year. The other 50 beds (Phase 2) are expected to be available by June 2019.

Here is where the beds will be going:

• Andrews of Summerside 30 in Phase 2.
• Andrews of Stratford 24 in Phase 1.
• Mount Continuing Care Community in Charlottetown 16 in Phase 1, four in Phase 2.
• Gillis Lodge in Belfast 10 in Phase 1, four in Phase 2.
• Le Cooprative'Le Chez-Nous' in Wellington 12 in Phase 2.

The 100 beds will bring the total number of long-term care beds in the province to 1,247, which includes 595 beds in public manors and 652 in private facilities.

Opposition response

Opposition health critic Sidney MacEwen says the new beds are "a long overdue step forward." However, he would like to know more about the considerations that go into decisions like these.

"It's hard to give a credible assessment on, you know is this a good idea to be putting 100 beds in? Do we need 200 beds? Do we need less beds and more home-care funding? It's hard to get a good read on that because we don't know how they're coming to these decisions," MacEwen said.

He says he'd asked for the working group looking at long-term care beds to present to the standing committee on health and wellness, and hopes that will happen soon.

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With files from Sarah MacMillan