“I want her back where she came from, where she’s known, where my dad is,” Michele Lenick told CTV News Toronto. Lenick explained that her 80-year-old aunt Mona Chasin has lived at Langstaff Square Care Community for at least two years. It is close to where she lives and since her father is also a resident, she can visit them both regularly. This summer Chasin suffered a stroke. Lenick said she learned by chance from a hospital worker that her aunt was only allowed to be away from the care home for 30 days. Lenik says her aunt was discharged after 28 days, but had to take a COVID-19 test to return. While she was asymptomatic, she tested positive, which meant she had to spend 10 days in isolation, effectively losing her room in Langstaff Square. “It’s devastating. Number one, I don’t think our seniors are being properly taken care of. Number two, I don’t know where it’s going to end up,” Lenick said. “It never occurred to me for a moment that it would affect her to lose her place in the nursing home.” Both the Department of Long-Term Care and Sienna Living, which manages the home. confirmed the 30-day “medical absence” rule to CTV News Toronto as part of the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021. The law states that residents can lose their room if they have a medical absence that exceeds 30 days. A resident may also lose their bed if they are on a psychiatric absence that exceeds 60 days or the total length of the resident’s absences during the calendar year exceeds 21 days. The ministry said a resident who has lost their room can reapply and is placed in a first-priority readmission category. Sienna Living said this is usually the highest priority. Lenik said that days after her aunt ended her isolation, her old room remained empty. The family is now paying $65 a day for their aunt to live in the hospital, waiting for a bed to become available and worried that when a new room is found she will be placed far away. The Ontario government recently passed legislation that allows hospital patients to be temporarily moved to a nursing home of their choice. Lennik is shocked a COVID-19 protocol prevented her aunt from returning to the home she knew in long-term care. “I thought maybe because she contracted COVID in the hospital and we knew there was an end date for her isolation, it wasn’t going to be three months, six months or nine months, she was going to be kept in bed.” The ministry said the median wait time is four months for applicants to be placed in a long-term care home. Sienna Living says it can’t speak to individual resident cases due to confidentiality – this includes room status. The isolation period for those in long-term care with a positive COVID test remains 10 days.
