NL Health Services is working on a plan to pitch to government, to tackle overcapacity in its hospitals.

CEO Dr. Pat Parfrey says it has everything to do with alternative levels of care, and creating other places to provide it.

He says the “gridlock” at hospitals is driven by more people getting old and frail, noting the numbers continue to increase “while the number of beds hasn’t changed in 20 years.”

What’s needed are more places for that transitional, restorative or long-term care, 30 repurposed acute care beds at the Health Sciences Centre, and the staff to handle them.

Parfrey says meetings will take place with various groups for their input in the coming weeks.

“We’re in the middle of creating a holistic provincial plan for over-capacity that’s multi-faceted that’s going to try an alleviate these issues that are occurring in our hospitals, and it involves an approach to getting more acute care beds in St. John’s where there’s not enough of them,” he said.

NL Health Services has allocated $10 million in this year’s budget to address some of the factors leading to backlogs in the health care system.