One of the World's Best Geriatric Centers
2009-04-R16
(Copyrighted 2009
by Don M. Tow)
A surprise awaited me when recently I and others
were given a tour of the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care (YHC) while
attending a conference in
The life expectancy of the residents of the YHC’s
nursing homes after admission is 7 years, while the provincial average of
nursing homes for
Besides the statistics, during the tour I also saw
certain characteristics that make the YHC stand out among nursing homes.
The first thing that impressed me was the
cleanliness of every room and every floor of the place, and they didn’t do
anything special before our visit, because we were not a VIP tour group.
All the rooms were well lit, the halls were
wide, the air was clean and fresh, and the rooms were spacious.
More importantly, I saw the serenity and
happiness on the faces of the residents.
Such characteristics just reflect and support
the numerical statistics quoted earlier.
How Was YHC Started?
The Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, formerly
called the Chinese Community Nursing Home for Greater Toronto, came about
when Dr. Joseph Wong witnessed the lack of emotional support and difficulty
in communicating for Chinese seniors within mainstream medical facilities.
So in 1987, Dr. Wong, spearheading the cause, gathered a group of 30 Chinese
Canadian friends who shared his vision of building a nursing home to care
for parents and grandparents with respect and dignity in their last years.
Out of that vision and seven years of
dedication, commitment, and hard work, Dr. Wong and his collaborators were
able to mobilize thousands of others at the grassroots level to contribute
time and money, and in October 1994 realized their dream by opening a
nursing home which turned out to be the first of four (and counting) Yee
Hong Centres for Geriatric Care.
They were able to generate an attitude adopted
at the grassroots level that they must give back to the community and that
no challenge is too great to overcome.
The YHC has repeatedly received the highest praise
from the Canadian government.
For example, in 1999 the Canadian Council on
Health Services Accreditation praised YHC for providing “stellar care” to
elderly members of the Chinese population, and found YHC to be so perfect
that “no recommendations have been made herein,” which is an amazing ringing
endorsement from a national body that scrutinizes and gives accreditation to
health facilities all over Canada.
Since 1997, the Ontario Long Term Care
Association has thrice selected YHC as the Grand Prize winner in their
Occupational Health and Safety Week Competition.
The Canadian Ministry of Health and Long-Term
Care is always referring delegates and media to YHC as the shining example
and the model of continuum of care for seniors. The May 31, 1999 issue of
Time Magazine in its “Special Report:
Expansion of YHC
In ten years’ time, the YHC has expanded from one
nursing home to four nursing homes in the Greater Toronto area with 805
beds.
Besides nursing homes, the YHC has also enlarged its
scope by providing 308 life lease housing units (housing units with some
support services) and 131 private condominiums, so that seniors can go from
independent living to assisted living and then to nursing home as they age
and require more health-care assistance.
YHC has also extended its services to
non-Chinese seniors, particularly those from the South Asian, Filipino and
Japanese communities, while attuning to the cultural values and traditions
of those ethnic groups.
YHC has added a full program of community-based
services serving their residents as well as non-residents.
Many of these community-based services are not
funded by the government, and rely solely or mostly on their own
fundraising.
Even many basic nursing home services are only
partially funded by the government.
As a result, in order for YHC to continue to
provide top-quality care and to expand in size and in services, it has
required large and continuous fundraising, and a large number of volunteers.
During the roughly 20 years of existence
starting from the seed of a vision, Dr. Joseph Wong and his many
collaborators and their army of volunteers have raised about $200 million.
Their largest regular single fund raising event
is their annual Dragon Ball, which in 2008 raised a net proceed of $900,000.
Not only there is a
long waiting list to move into one of YHC’s nursing home beds or housing
units, almost unprecedented there is also a waiting list of volunteers to
contribute their services to YHC!
Why was YHC so successful?
I think that there are several reasons:
Ongoing Challenges
Faced by YHC
Yee Hong Centres’ exemplary service and continuum
of care are under serious challenges due to increasing financial
constraints.
There are several contributing factors:
To sustain their current level of care, YHC needs
to raise a net of $2.5 million every year.
Due to the increasingly competitive fundraising
environment and the economic downturn, this is difficult to achieve, and YHC
has not met its fundraising target for the past three years.
That was why they had to reduce or eliminate
certain services, an example of the latter is their in-home Cancer and
Palliative Care Service.
A long-term solution would probably need to
rely on an overhaul of the whole healthcare industry on a national level.
Power of One
The Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care is definitely a great success story. Such a great success of course was due to the contributions of many people. However, if it weren’t for the vision, passion, dedication, commitment, and hard work of one person, Dr. Joseph Wong, spanning more than two decades, there would not be the Yee Hong Centre success story.
In June 1998 on the occasion of
receiving the Max Beberman Award from her high school in
The impact of Dr. Joseph Wong for
providing geriatric care in
More information about the Yee Hong
Centre for Geriatric Care can be found at:
http://www.yeehong.com/.
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