TORONTO - More than 400 patients have been forced into Ontario nursing homes they did not want to go to and the rate of those moves is increasing.
There were four-hundred-twenty-four discharged patients who moved to a nursing home not of their choosing out of 20-thousand-two-hundred-sixty-one patients who were moved to long-term care homes since a law allowing such moves came into force in late 2022.
The long-term care minister's office says about one-third of those patients were moved in just February and March, the last two months for which data was available.
And one woman faces a 26-thousand-dollar hospital charge under the provisions of the new law.
The province introduced Bill 7 in 2022 in an effort to open up much needed hospital beds.
It is aimed at so-called alternate level of care patients who are discharged from hospital but need a long-term care bed and don't have one yet.
The law allows those transfers even if the patients don't consent to them, but if they flat out refuse to leave the hospital, the law requires hospitals to charge them four-hundred-dollars a day.
Ruth Poupard and her daughter, Michele Campeau, are refusing to pay a 26-thousand-dollar hospital bill after Campeau refused to put Poupard into a nursing home they hated.
Experts say the southwestern Ontario family could face a lawsuit, collection agency -- or nothing -- by ignoring the hospital bill.
The province says the new law is working as intended.