Eight residents return home through transitional care program
Rose Garden Villa praised for program’s success
Tuesday January 24, 2012 -- Deron Hamel
The transitional care program at Rose Garden Villa has seen eight residents improve their mobility and return home since the initiative was launched in November through a partnership between the Revera home, the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and the local Community Care Access Centre (CCAC).

To date, 12 residents transferring from Windsor Regional Hospital and Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital have participated in the program, which is aimed at alleviating alternate level of care pressure on the acute-care system.

As part of the initiative, Rose Garden Villa has been granted eight transitional care beds to provide people coming from hospital with decreased mobility a place to convalesce. While at the home, residents receive physiotherapy and rehabilitative care.

Restorative-care aides are assigned permanently to the program’s residents.

Once residents return home, the local CCAC ensures they receive any necessary assisted care, as well as to make sure people have proper equipment in their home to maximize safety.

The program has been so successful that Rose Garden Villa has applied for another five beds.

Beth Desjarlais-Tefft, Rose Garden Villa’s executive director, is applauding the program’s success.

“People are coming out of the hospital, (coming to Rose Garden Villa) and then they’re going home, which is everybody’s hope,” she tells the Morning Report.

As a testament to the program’s success, an 87-year-old woman, who had transferred from hospital to the Windsor long-term care home Dec. 2, went home Jan. 6 after responding successfully to physiotherapy and other rehabilitative interventions.

The resident’s daughter, Kathy MacKenzie, wrote a letter published in the Windsor Star Jan. 16, outlining the excellent care her mother received at the home.

“Mom had already been in the hospital, in bed, for over four weeks with very limited physiotherapy,” MacKenzie writes.

“She did not want to lie there for another two weeks and get even weaker than she already was. Even though the drive for family and friends was significant, we chose Rose Garden Villa. The program has been excellent and exactly what was needed for my mother.”

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