Just what is St. Joseph's Continuing Care Centre (SJCCC) in Sudbury?
Good question. According to administrator Jo-Anne Palkovits, a lot of people in Sudbury and throughout the northeast aren't quite sure.
Open for a little more than a year, the ultra-modern facility on South Bay Road may be one of the best-kept secrets in northeastern Ontario's health-care sector.
"It's a new program for the community, so we're trying to educate the community, specifically physicians, because rehab has been difficult to access (in the northeast) and people have often had to go down to Hamilton or Toronto," said Palkovits. "Now, we have a facility here."
A chronic care facility designated as a hospital under Ontario's Public Hospitals Act, the 64-bed St. Joseph's Continuing Care Centre serves patients with a medically complex condition requiring long-term management and patients requiring functional enhancement, or rehabilitation, following a hip replacement or some other condition.
A third program, launching this month, is a geriatric rehab service for the frail elderly who require in-patient therapy and management of geriatric conditions that threaten their ability to return home and live independently.
Other cities, including Thunder Bay, have had chronic care hospitals for years. "Sudbury hasn't focused on this kind of care for the community," said Palkovits.
The history of the SJCCC dates back to 1997 when the province's Health Services Restructuring Commission ordered the amalgamation of the Sisters of St. Joseph's Sudbury General Hospital with the city's two other acute care hospitals. The Commission reserved a long-term continuing care role for the Sisters, involving oversight of complex continuing care, palliative care and rehabilitation services in a separate tower at the new one site hospital. The Sisters assigned this role to a new corporation called St. Joseph's Health Centre (SJHC), overseen by a board of directors made up of lay community members.
In 2000, when construction delays and cost overruns put a freeze on the one-site project, the SJHC proposed moving part of the services it was mandated to deliver to the site of St. Joseph's Villa, a long-term care facility that opened around the same time on land leased from Laurentian University.
Solution
The SJCCC was "part of the solution," said Palkovits. "We carved out this piece and brought it over here," trimming the cost of the one-site hospital. The Sisters no longer have any involvement in the funding or operation of health care in Sudbury, but in recognition of their past contributions to the community, the SJCCC adheres to Catholic health-care ethics, while serving patients of all denominations.
Construction at the South Bay Road site began in October 2007 and the facility opened in June 2009.
The SJCCC offers a higher level of care than a long-term care home, providing oxygen therapy, tracheotomy care, deep suctioning, chronic, non-invasive ventilation, peritoneal dialysis, hemodialysis, continuous bladder irrigation, complex wound care, intravenous medication and fluid administration, central venous catheter, PICC lines and port-a-caths, but stops short of providing acute care.
The 32-bed Medically Complex Unit serves patients with advanced multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and severe brain injuries, among other conditions.
The Functional Enhancement Unit, on the other hand, cares for patients convalescing from hip replacement surgeries and other conditions requiring intensive rehabilitation for two to six months. In the absence of this service, a patient recovering from hip surgery would receive a few weeks of rehabilitation and would then be sent home.
However, without adequate rehabilitation, the patient could deteriorate and either end up in Emergency or a long-term care home.
ALC relief
"Since June 2009, we've discharged 80 individuals who would have been taking up a bed at Sudbury Regional, or gone home, not done well and returned to hospital, whereas we were able to work with them a bit longer and get them back home," said Palkovits.
The SJCC has a staff of approximately 100, including physicians, nurses, physios and occupational therapists. The modern facility a stone's throw from the Northern Ontario Medical School features bright, spacious dining areas with great views of Ramsey Lake, attractive rooms with mechanical ceiling lifts, large picture windows, special tubs and showers and attractive lounges for patients and families. There's also a room with rehabilitation equipment and a kitchen that's used to help patients prepare for daily living tasks.
"Mobility is very important, bathing is big, but eating is huge," said Palkovits.
The new 16-bed Geriatric Rehabilitation Unit which opened in September is designed to help the frail elderly get back on their feet and return them to their homes following an acute episode or hospital stay.
Prior to the introduction of the service, said Palkovits, the patient would either take up a bed in an acute care hospital for an extended period of time or go to a nursing home, which isn't equipped for intensive rehabilitation. The patient may ultimately recover, but by then, the family has often given up the patient's apartment and sold everything, so the patient has nowhere else to go.
By undergoing intensive rehabilitation in the Geriatric Rehab Unit, "there will be a placeholder, so patients know they will be going home."
Until now, said Palkovits, there was an impression in the community that "you've had a fall, you're old, you go to hospital, and you end up in long-term care. That's not the case. The reality is that a large majority of these individuals could be going home.
"Patients who end up in a long-term care home often deteriorate when they don't have access to the kind of services you see here, and it gets to the point where they can't be rehabilitated."
The Geriatric Rehabilitation Unit will help alleviate the Alternate Level of Care crisis at Sudbury Regional Hospital. Equally important, however, it gives hope to seniors who really do want to go home.
"I don't think any of us grow up thinking that when we reach a certain age, we're going to live in a nursing home," said Palkovits.
Nevertheless, long-term care beds are still very much in demand, which is why the SJHC is in the midst of building the 128-bed St. Gabriel's Villa in Chelmsford, its second long-term care facility.
The next challenge for the community, said Palkovits, is to tackle the shortage of supportive housing units.
"We need hundreds of supportive housing units. Whether it's us that builds them or someone else, it's nice to know that we have the property. We don't necessarily have to manage or control it. We just want to make sure it happens."
www.stjosephscentre.ca
