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A new geriatric clinic in Dieppe has a goal of offering services for seniors and freeing up beds in overcrowded hospitals.
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Vitalité Health Network’s 8,000 square-foot clinic located on Champlain Street, will offer assessment and rehabilitation services for patients ages 65 and older.
The clinic has a team of professionals including physicians, nurses, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, speech language pathologist and a social worker.
Dr. Guylaine Chiasson, geriatrician at the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, said in an interview the clinic will help to address bottlenecks in the hospitals where patients in the emergency department are waiting for hospital beds occupied by seniors undergoing rehabilitation.
“We have patients who have to stay [in hospital] even if they are capable of walking because there are no other ways to offer them the appropriate therapy,” she said.
Patients are referred to the geriatric clinic by their primary care provider or by their medical staff at the hospital. The patients make up two groups: those coming out of a hospital stay who are able to return home, but need to finish their rehabilitation, or those who have suffered falls at home and are at risk of falling.
Chiasson said patients attend the clinic two half days a week for roughly 6-8 weeks to work on their mobility, speech, or other issues. Having the clinic will help with reducing a patient’s length of stay in hospital and will help those at risk of falling to prevent future hospitalizations.
It is the first ambulatory clinic dedicated to senior services for Vitalité. Chiasson said the health authority had visited similar clinics in other provinces to learn best practices for their own facility.
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Sharon Smyth Okana, Vitalité‘s vice-president of client programs, told Brunswick News the clinic has about 80 visits a week.
“The vision is to be capable of increasing the volume in the coming years to respond to the demand,” she said, noting there will soon be more than 200,000 people 65 or older in New Brunswick.
Vitalite has a bigger vision of implementing the model in all its four zones.
Medical assessment for seniors is already in place at l’Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus RHSJ† in Caraquet and at the Campbellton Regional Hospital. A second phase is planned to integrate rehabilitation services, such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy and social work.
Smyth Okana said the rollout of Vitalité‘s long-term plan will depend on the needs of the community, and there is a possibility for long-distance consultations in other zones with experts at the Dieppe clinic.
She added that having a new clinic specifically for geriatrics is positive for recruitment of professionals like physiotherapists and occupational therapists.
“It’s like a dream centre, a holistic approach, a team approach,” she said. “It’s something professions are looking for.”
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