Special care home operators are questioning Premier Susan Holt’s assertion that there’s no alternative to housing hospital patients in an ambulance bay without running water or bathrooms.
While acknowledging earlier this month that the makeshift unit at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital, known as the medical transition unit, is not acceptable care, Holt said it’s necessary.
“It’s pretty hard to say that it’s better than nothing because it is terrible,” she said. “But the alternative right now is, is is nothing is no care, no, no place to lay your head down.”
But several current and former operators of special care home disagree and are calling on the province to make better use of the care-home option.
Special care homes offer around-the-clock care to New Brunswickers. The province has 301 of these homes that are privately owned but regulated by the Department of Social Development.
Colleen and Marty Hood ran a special care home from 2012 until 2019.
The pair also recently had a loved one admitted to the Chalmers medical transition unit, fashioned out of an ambulance bay.
It’s been in use for at least a year, but the conditions were put into the public eye after a registered nurse working in Fredericton wrote a letter to the premier about her grandmother’s stay.
The Hoods both used the word “disgusting” to describe the unit.
Marty Hood, a nurse of 21 years,
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