Some Fairfield retirement home residents relocated to hospital

With no other immediate options available, some former residents of the now-shuttered Fairfield Retirement Residences have been relocated to hospital rooms at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

Silvie Crawford, Executive Vice-President and Chief Nursing Executive said KHSC has accepted a “small number of individuals as a result of the issues with the Fairfield Home locations,” noting that this was “a very unique circumstance.”

Crawford said that while KHSC is working to assist individuals in the community through this transition, KHSC’s priority remained on patients who need the acute and specialized care that is provided by KHSC.

Several areas of the hospital have made some changes to accommodate the residents and to ensure that other patients’ care will not be significantly or adversely affected by the influx.

While the hospital says it has currently only been asked to accept a small number of people from Fairfield, the administration says it is continuing to work with the South East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to support them as they locate safe and appropriate alternate locations for all of the individuals who have been displaced from the retirement homes.

KHSC did not immediately confirm how many residents were being temporarily housed at the hospital, nor what the associated cost of those hospital beds is. It is believed that approximately half a dozen displaced residents are currently at KHSC, with the cost being approximately $1000 per bed, daily. If the residents are designated to be under the hospital’s Alternate Level Of Care, they would be responsible to pay approximately $60 per day as a co-pay fee. It is not known how long the residents will have to be accommodated in hospital before long-term housing is secured.

Amber Gooding, Acting Director of Communications & Engagement at LHIN, could not comment on whether the retirement residence owner, Q & Sons Management, would be responsible for the costs associated with housing the displaced residents in hospital rooms, nor elsewhere.

“Our concern is to provide them with safe housing,” said Gooding. “We can’t hold the owner of a private retirement home responsible, that’s outside our purview. That would be the responsibility of (an entity such as) the RHRA, Kingston Fire & Rescue or Kingston Police.”