P-E-I’s nursing home association says a shortage of long-term-care beds is filling up the province’s emergency rooms.
Health P-E-I says that as of August 2024, there were 261 Islanders waiting to be placed into long-term care, and many of those people are waiting in hospitals that are already full.
William McGuigan, chairman of the Nursing Home Association of P-E-I, says the shortage of beds is creating a “bottleneck” in the system — which has 13-hundred long-term-care beds split between nine publicly owned homes and 10 privately owned facilities.
Meanwhile, Health P-E-I is planning to seek proposals to create spaces for an additional 175 beds in private, long-term-care facilities, which McGuigan says will have a “a huge impact” on the system.
