Yellowknife (Feb 19/03) - There are few options open to seniors who need assisted living in Yellowknife.

Aven Manor and the extended or acute care units at Stanton Regional Hospital are the only assisted care facilities in Yellowknife. And they're bursting.

Jack Adderley waited nearly eight months to get a room at Aven Manor. - Erin Fletcher/NNSL photo

"One of the challenges we see is an inadequate number of beds for extended and long-term care," said Lona Heinzig, executive director of the Yellowknife Association of Concerned Citizens for Seniors (YACCS).

"We're seeing dramatic shifts in the Northwest Territories. We're all getting older," said YACCS president Allan Falconer.

"There is an imbalance. There's enough long-term care beds but not in the right places."

YACCS operates Aven Manor, an assisted care facility for seniors. It opened in 1986 with 29 beds. The facility is designed to accommodate level 2 to 4 patients.

A level 1 patient is someone who lives at home with home-care support. A level 5 patient needs full-time extended care.

Heinzig said it's difficult when residents at Aven Manor progress to an extended care level because when the hospital is full the patient must remain at Aven Manor. She said the two facilities and the families of patients are "stressed to the limit."

Right now there are two Aven Manor patients who require extended care but there's no room at the hospital.

Jack Adderley, 78, knows what waiting is all about.

He spent nearly nine months in the extended care facility at Stanton before getting a bed last September.

In December 2001, Adderley was putting up Christmas decorations in his apartment when he had "a light stroke" and fell from his step ladder, fracturing his back.

When he was ready to leave the hospital a month later his doctors told him he couldn't live alone in case of another episode.

He needed to live in Aven Manor but there were no available beds. So he spent almost eight months sharing a two-bed hospital room and bathroom with other patients -- including an inmate from the local jail.

"The main reason I couldn't get in (to Aven Manor) was because there weren't enough nurses to care for any new clients," said Adderley, who co-founded the Yellowknifer. "I was mad because I'd written stories about the government when they pulled something like this."

Adderley's daughter, Susan Franklin, was as upset as her father.

"It was a very difficult wait," said Franklin, who visited her father daily at the hospital.

Franklin, whose mother also lives in Aven Manor, said she was frustrated about the funding freeze which prevented Aven Manor from hiring additional staff so Adderley's room could be opened. She wrote letters to MLAs pushing for financial assistance.

She said although the nurses at Stanton gave her father the best possible care, he didn't belong in a medical bed.

"The cost to taxpayers was great because of the medical bed," she said.

Adderley was happy to leave the hospital when Aven Manor could finally give him a room.

"I was so glad to get out of there and come in here where there's peace and quiet," said Adderley as he reclined in his cosy room full of memorabilia.

"Everybody treats us with a certain degree of respect and you can't ask for anything more than that," he said.

The dollars and cents Each Aven Manor patient costs between $130 and $140 per day -- $3,900 to $4,200 a month -- to care for.

The majority of the funding for Aven Manor is through Yellowknife Health and Social Services while the Yellowknife Housing Corporation also contributes. The patient is responsible for $700 a month toward the bill -- an established government ceiling.

The Aven Manor waiting list is a "moving target" but currently has eight people on it, said Heinzig. When a bed is available, a committee chooses the next tenant based on need.

"They may be sitting there for a long time. Even if they are deemed the highest priority, there may not be a bed available."

Those wait-listed for Aven Manor are either at home making do with home care nursing, in the acute care unit at Stanton or living with a family member, she said.

Stanton has 10 extended-care beds. The beds are for patients, usually 65 and older, who require 24-hour nursing care and may or may not be confined to their beds, said Celine Pelletier, manager of medical services at Stanton.

The cost per patient is much higher than at Aven Manor. It costs between $1,500 and $1,800 a day for an acute or extended care patient.

Demographically speaking There are "consistently at least two" on the waiting list for extended care beds, said Pelletier.

"The major issue is bed availability and patients are having to wait for acute care beds," said Pelletier, adding unstable staffing over the past decade has also contributed to bed shortages.

Yellowknife has three kinds of seniors -- permanent residents, residents who have gone South but have returned to Yellowknife to retire, and those who move here to be close to their families, said Falconer.

Heinzig of YACCS said the seniors who move up here may not require assisted living right now, but a majority of them probably will in the future.

Although Yellowknife has five or six times the population of smaller communities like Hay River and Fort Simpson, the smaller communities have almost the same number of long-term care beds.

Fort Smith has 21 beds, Hay River has 16 beds and Fort Simpson has 20 beds, said Heinzig.

Pelletier said Stanton has sent patients to Fort Simpson and beyond when there's been no beds in Yellowknife.

Plans for the future A new dementia facility should ease the burden on existing assisted care beds, said Falconer.

The facility is still in the developmental stages but the GNWT has already committed $500,000.

A consultation team is presently researching a care model for Yellowknife. The model will be used to determine the design of the building and the costs.

Falconer said between 24 and 30 beds should help alleviate current bed shortages.

"We will be getting the bottleneck cleaned up by introducing a dementia facility," he said.

"It will make a significant impact in returning Aven Manor to its original purpose as a long-term care facility."

Although both Aven Manor and Stanton house dementia patients, neither facility was designed for their needs -- a calm stable environment with indoor walking facilities, said Heinzig.

"They can do a lot of things and it's sad when they have to live in a facility that is locked," said Pelletier, adding an activity aid does the best she can to keep the patients busy but a facility dedicated to their needs would be ideal.

Pelletier called the dementia facility an "excellent idea."

"Just relieving extended care beds of clients who could live at the dementia facility would unload the system," she said.