Update Regarding Notice on Health and Safety of Patient Rooms

Earlier this week, Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre (SLMHC) provided patients and their families/support persons with a notice regarding the health and safety of patient rooms. We have since seen and heard the concerns of the community regarding this notice, and SLMHC would like to provide some further information regarding how both acute care and long-term care are operated in Sioux Lookout.

For a number of years, SLMHC has stressed the importance of having additional Long-Term Care beds because of the impact it has had on patient care. Having a large number of Alternate Level of Care patients in our hospital has impacted the ability to get acute care patients out of the Emergency Department and into a bed. The lack of beds has also impacted the ability to repatriate our patients back from other facilities in a timely manner, such as Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. We are currently in the planning and development phase for a new 96-bed long-term care facility. Once we have these beds, our inpatient unit will be able to admit patients from our Emergency Department and accept patients from tertiary centres in a timely fashion. In the meantime, we are thankful for the support and collaboration from Ontario Health North, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Long-Term Care in addressing our pressures.

SLMHC is an acute care hospital funded by the Ministry of Health. While most of our patients are acute care patients, we do have patients awaiting long-term care. They are designated Alternate Level of Care (ALC). SLMHC owns and operates a long-term care facility with 21 residents, governed by the Ministry of Long-Term Care. This means that all persons occupying a bed at SLMHC are considered patients, and those occupying a bed at our long-term care facility are residents. All patients admitted to the hospital must follow the same health and safety standards of an acute care hospital, which must be applied equally to all patients and rooms.

SLMHC is responsible for ensuring the health and safety of all patients, visitors, and staff within the facility. The primary goal of our Infection Prevention and Control Department is to protect clients, patients, residents, staff and visitors from hospital-associated infections. The standard of care of operating a hospital includes actively monitoring best practices and ensuring items such as furniture in all patient rooms can be properly cleaned and disinfected. We are responsible to ensure patient rooms are maintained with proper cleaning, such as limiting paint peeling and damage to walls. Ensuring the health and safety of all also includes adhering to fire safety codes and evacuation standards. As hallways and doorways are the lifelines for evacuation and fire safety, SLMHC’s goal is to avoid cluttered rooms, doorways, and hallways. We are responsible to maintain proper fire safety at all times, and to also ensure patients can easily be relocated in the event of an outbreak or as required based on the needs of all patients.

We are in agreement that the comfort and safety of our patients is important to all. We are currently exploring options for safe adhering of comfort items for patients, such as safely displaying pictures that can be properly disinfected, as part of recognizing the emotional and mental aspects of caring for the whole self. Until new solutions are in place to safely display wall hangings, all pictures can remain in patient rooms. However, electrical appliances and non-hospital furniture are still not permitted.

The health, safety, and emotional well-being of our patients remains our top priority. As part of our values statement, we remain dedicated to providing high-quality, individualized care that meets best practice standards and is equitable to all. Miigwetch, thank you, for your cooperation and understanding.