Home Away from Home Concept Allows for Safe, Accessible Places for Patients to Stay

[Regarding Home Away from Home concept] This will be run by the Vancouver Island Children’s Foundation for the communal kitchen with family units, particularly important for the Indigenous family network and then there’ll be a hostel type unit as well because we will have people coming down, particularly pregnant moms from small, remote regions or villages that need to be down here ahead of time but even for people coming from [Community X] or [Community Y], they’ve got a 6:00 am check-in for surgery, to come down the night before and get a good night’s rest and then be able to just walk over to the hospital and have your surgery. But also with my background, understanding the overcapacity in acute care that you could have post-op patients or recovering patients and the docs will come and do the rounds at 6 or 7 or 8 in the morning and say you’re good to go and the person goes, ‘yes but my ride’s coming after work from [Community Z]’. So they won’t get here until 7 at night. So by this you’ll be able to, if they’re ready to be discharged they can go over to a unit, either sleep for the day or sit in the lounge and watch TV, watch a show. And those are all community driven.