Providence Care is Southeastern Ontario’s leading provider of Aging, Mental Health and Rehabilitative Care. In collaboration with our partners, we work to improve early access to specialized care while ensuring that patients receive the right care at the most appropriate time and at the appropriate level. Recently, we sat down with Caryn Langstaff, Manager of Access to Care and Transitions, to discuss what exactly this means.
Caryn explained that in 2013 Restorative Rehabilitative Care (RRC) beds were created to address a service gap in the region; these beds helped to introduce a new level of care to support patients who require additional rehabilitation at a lower-level of intensity while in hospital. With the opening of Providence Care Hospital, an additional 10 RRC beds have been introduced which utilize an innovative and integrated bed configuration model.
Level 1 of Providence Care Hospital includes three 30-bed units that together make up one third of the total bed count. The 10 new Restorative Rehabilitative Care beds have been embedded into the intensive rehabilitation units on Heritage 1 and Lakeview 1. This allows for more flexibility for patients who progress or clinically require a longer length of stay than anticipated on admission, while preventing bed moves and transfers of care, interruption or loss within their rehabilitation journey and/or established therapeutic relationships. To achieve this, admissions and transitions require an interprofessional team approach to care and a level of flexibility across the Lakeview 1 and Heritage 1 units based on bed availability.
By focusing on specific patient ability and tolerance, the primary objective of this model is to provide earlier access to our exceptional, patient-centered, specialized rehabilitation care. This approach also ensures continuity of care for patients during their stay at Providence Care Hospital; wherever possible, the same physicians and care teams are maintained for care planning with transfers between Restorative Rehabilitative Care and Intensive Rehabilitation.
Caryn noted that rehabilitation volumes for Restorative, Seniors and Intensive streams average over 800 admissions annually. With the introduction of the 10 new Restorative Rehabilitative Care beds, it is expected that 75 additional patients will benefit from this service annually. Through the implementation of this innovative bed model we are able to offer our patients earlier access to rehabilitation which correlates directly to improved functional outcomes and reduced length of stay.
Leave a Reply