Nursing home beds

With more than 300 seniors in New Brunswick needing a nursing home bed, Horizon Health Network is hoping to lower demand through a new initiative.

During Thursday’s board meeting, David Arbeau, Horizon’s clinical executive director overseeing patient flow, announced the network is looking to identify 180 nursing home beds it could create across its hospitals in the coming year.

“We know that the space for care is not where it needs to be,” he said.

According to Arbeau, more than 40 per cent of the network’s beds are occupied by alternative level of care or ALC patients.

Alternative level of care patients are individuals occupying a hospital bed who no longer require acute or intensive care but cannot be discharged due to a lack of appropriate long-term care or rehabilitation.

With New Brunswick having one of the fastest-aging populations in the country, and projections showing the number of adults aged 75 and older will nearly double by 2043, the network expects this will be a long-term issue it will need to continue to account for.

As hospital beds are occupied, that also increases the number of boarded patients — those who have been admitted but remain without an inpatient bed.

Arbeau said the addition of 180 beds would free up medical beds where boarded and hallway patients can be moved.

“This is about creating additional spaces where we can actually move and cohort patients that require nursing home-level care in the same environment to improve the model of care,” he said.

Arbeau said Horizon identified 180 beds because that is the average number of boarded patients across the network.

He added that based on pressure points and where Horizon currently has nursing home-level care patients, the network estimates 60 beds would be allocated in Fredericton, 60 in Saint John, 40 in Moncton and 20 in Miramichi.

Arbeau said Horizon is already working to identify potential hospital spaces that other services may be able to move out of, allowing the network to “connect the dots.”

However, health authority officials did not specify how the beds would be staffed during Thursday’s meeting.

In her opening statement, Susan Harley, Horizon’s board chair, said the network continues to face a “critical and multifaceted capacity crisis.”

She said the issue peaked in July 2025, with 40 per cent of ALC patients occupying acute care beds.

Harley added that since April 2023, the figure has not dropped below 33 per cent and, according to media reports, stood at 37 per cent as of February.

“High occupancy pressures every part of our system from emergency departments to operating rooms to inpatient units,” she said. “It creates barriers to timely care [and] can negatively impact patient experience and place tremendous strain on our staff and physicians.”

Harley said addressing the issue will require “intentional, coordinated action across the health and social care systems.”

During a media availability with reporters, Margaret Melanson, Horizon’s CEO, said the government supports the network’s initiative to add the beds.

Acadia Broadcasting reached out to the Department of Health to confirm this but did not receive a response before deadline.

As of Thursday, the government continues its efforts to address the shortages with the unveiling of a long-term strategy that promises to add 624 nursing home beds to the system by the end of the decade.

During the meeting, Horizon board members asked whether the government’s announcement would change the network’s plans for internal nursing home beds, but Dr. Elizabeth McCaw, the network’s physician program lead, said no.

She said only part of the 624 new nursing home beds would be located in hospitals, as most would be allocated to seniors waiting in their homes.

“The growing aging population and the fact that we’re looking at maybe 100, 120 beds of sort in the foreseeable future, we absolutely do need to continue on the plan because our numbers exceed that,” she said.

*Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misattributed a statement from Horizon’s board chair Susan Harley to Horizon’s Dr. Susan Brien, senior vice-president medical, academic and research affairs. We regret the error.