Sarah Anderson, director of care at ROP, and RNAO representative Tonya Davis celebrate the designation of ROP as a Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO).
Royal Ottawa Place (ROP) is not an ordinary long-term care home, it is an extraordinary one.
ROP occupies a distinctive space in the healthcare continuum. Operated by the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, it's a long-term care (LTC) home for people who are diagnosed with a mental illness, yet, the home lacks any special designation or funding to support the type of care it provides.
“There is no long-term care home that is designated as a mental health long-term care home in Ontario," says Sarah Anderson, the director of care at ROP. “We want to be the first."
Administrator Debbie Pilon says special designation would help ROP secure funding for more specialized programming and contribute to the hiring of staff who are not typically part of a LTC team, such as recreation therapists and behaviour therapists.
At ROP, staff are proud to provide a unique mental health-focused model of care for a unique population.
Unlike a typical LTC home with an exclusively geriatric population, at ROP the majority of residents are under the age of 65 and have a severe mental illness (SMI).
Examples of SMI include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and borderline personality disorder.
SMI can cause mood and behavioural changes, alter cognition, and impair an individual's ability to function in society. People living with SMI often need supportive community or group housing to maintain their well-being. Unfortunately, the availability of such housing is limited and demand is high.
LTC homes in Ontario are seeing an influx in the number of resident applications for individuals with SMI. Many staff in LTC are not equipped to provide care for individuals with SMI or responsive behaviours, and as a result, residents are sometimes sent to the hospital and reside on alternate level of care (ALC) beds or are not accepted to live in a LTC home.
Frequent hospital readmissions can have negative effects. Readmissions are disruptive and demoralizing to the individual and their family, and strain healthcare resources.
ROP nurses, personal care workers, and recreation therapists work as a team to reduce hospital readmissions through timely and individualized interventions, crisis management, and continuity of care.
ROP is not specifically funded for this care but provides it as best it can within the regular LTC system funding calculations because it's needed and it's the right thing to do.
The people who call ROP home enjoy a high quality of life in a supportive community, with personalized care and engaging activities.
“It's been their home and they're successful here," says Pilon. “So many of our residents have been in and out of the system for years and years. We provide them with a life that's meaningful."
Adults at ROP in their 40s, 50, and even 60s generally have different needs than a typical geriatric population in LTC. For example, they benefit from different types of therapeutic groups and tend to be interested in different activities – and even dinner menus – think mac n' cheese instead of meat and potatoes. A younger clientele is more likely to explore volunteer opportunities than their geriatric counterparts in LTC, and benefit from extra guidance around community integration and life skills.
Pilon and Anderson say it's very likely that ROP has the largest population of people with SMI compared to any other LTC home in Ontario.
ROP's ultimate goal is to create a unique LTC model that can be shared with other homes in Ontario that care for this demographic.
“Ideally, in the future, we will see the creation of specialized mental health LTC homes that follow a model of care specifically designed with this clientele in mind," says Anderson. “Until that time we will continue to advocate for our residents – and for proper funding – so we can keep doing what we're doing."
This year, ROP was designated a Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO). A BPSO is a health care or academic organization that works with the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) to implement and evaluate best practice guidelines for client care. A BPSO follows these guidelines to improve the quality and safety of their services, measure the results, and share their experiences with other BPSOs.