St. Joseph\u2019s Care Group says.<\/a><\/p>\nThese patients aren\u2019t necessarily waiting to get into long-term care; they may be waiting for a space in a rehabilitation program, a retirement home, or for at-home supports that allow them to age in place, said Rhonda Crocker-Ellacott, the TBRHSC\u2019s president and chief executive officer.<\/p>\n
We don’t want to see patients readmitted to hospital; we want to see patients successfully transition to other levels of care back to the community.- Rhonda Crcoker-Ellacott, president and CEO of TBRHSC<\/p>\n
Though Crocker-Ellacott welcomes the addition of long-term care beds in the city, she is concerned about how the loss of these beds as transitional spaces may affect the hospital \u2014 which could see an influx of patients filling acute care beds who require other care, instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a cohort of patients that very much benefit from transitional care and we are concerned that [at] the Health Sciences Centre, we need to have access to that type of bed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are actually working together with Ontario Health to reestablish a semblance of transitional care within our hospital site because we recognize that there are patients who are no longer acute [but] they need more time; they don’t fit criteria for other partner programs or community programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
CBC News reached out to the province for comment about current wait-times to get into long-term care in Thunder Bay, as well as what is being done to meet demands for both long-term care and transitional spaces.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the ministry of long-term care provided an emailed response but did not comment on current wait-times or beds specifically in Thunder Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo address LTC\u00a0capacity challenges in northern Ontario, the ministry of long-term care (LTC) launched the Capital Funding Program in July 2025. The program aims to accelerate the construction of new\u00a0LTC homes, particularly in regions such as northern Ontario, that face labour shortages, supply chain constraints, and other barriers,\u201d they wrote Friday.<\/p>\n
Hospital says more transitional care beds needed<\/p>\n
As of Friday, Crocker-Ellacott said the TBRHSC had 76 patients that were no longer considered in need of acute care; of these, 36 were waiting for a long-term care bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditional care beds would be additional capacity to our current capacity. So, that would mean that we would be able to improve patient access, patient flow,\u201d Crocker-Ellacott said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779780737_891_default.jpg\")
Hogarth Riverview Manor in Thunder Bay, Ont., is getting 14 new community-based transitional beds as it re-purposes 64 temporary transitional spaces into long-term care beds. (Marc Doucette\/CBC)<\/p>\n
\u201cAny type of new bed with the intended purpose of really helping patients transition effectively back home or to other levels of care is an excellent thing to see happen. We don’t want to see patients readmitted to hospital; we want to see patients successfully transition to other levels of care back to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Black, she said \u201cwhat we’re doing right now is meeting a very immediate need for long-term care beds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continuously work with TBRHSC, Ontario Health at Home and Ontario Health to plan together for the needs of people [whose] care needs [are] not being met in long-term care or other community transitional care units.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Joseph\u2019s Care Group has also been looking to create new supportive housing in the city, \u201cand that is something that we work very closely with Ontario Health on trying to develop,\u201d said Black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-694380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779780736_775_default.jpg\")
Janine Black is president and chief executive officer of St. Joseph’s Care Group in Thunder Bay, Ont. (Sarah Law\/CBC)<\/p>\n