Youville Home merges with Caritas to gain efficiencies

Staff shortages meant Youville struggled to fill its beds 220 beds

- photo supplied Youville’s $24-million facility is taking the strategic move of merging with the Caritas Health Group.

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
St. Albert

Youville Home in St. Albert is merging with the Caritas Health Group in a bid to gain more resources and staff.

The announcement came Feb. 7, less than a year after Youville opened a new, state of the art facility besides its original building on St. Vital Avenue.

Caritas, which operates the Edmonton General, Grey Nuns and Misericordia hospitals, has already assumed responsibility for the management and operation of Youville, a voluntary, not-for-profit facility that offers continuing care as well as respite and palliative care to 154 residents.

Merger requested

The Youville Home board of directors requested the merger as a way to strengthen their organization and continue their 140-year-old mission and healing ministry, said Caritas president Patrick Dumelie.

“They believe that by merging the resources of the two organizations that would make both organizations stronger, which would enable us to be of greater service to the community of St. Albert and Edmonton into the future and really expand our mission.”

Following the opening of its new $24-million facility last May and the subsequent renovation of its older building, Youville Home has struggled to fill all of their beds due to staffing shortages and is now looking for support from the resources Caritas has in the human resources area.

Economies of scale

“They want to capitalize on the size and the economies of scale of Caritas in very practical things like our buying power as a larger organization and our administrative expertise, including our human resources expertise and recruitment and retainment,” Dumelie said.

- photo supplied Patrick Dumelie

“But really by bringing Youville Home and Caritas together we can capitalize on the strengths of each.”

Formed in 1992 with the coming together of the Grey Nuns Hospital, the Misericordia Hospital and the General Continuing Care Centre, Caritas Health Group is Alberta’s largest faith-based health care provider with an annual operating budget of $341-million and a team of over 6,000 employees, 1,400 volunteers and 1,300 physicians.

For its part, Youville Home has an annual operating budget of $10-million and a team of 337 employees plus dozens of volunteers.

It currently has 154 residents, although it has a capacity for 220.

Shared mission

Despite their size, both Caritas and Youville Home “share a lot in common in terms of our mission and our values and our tradition,” Dumelie said, noting both organizations continue to be shaped by the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns) of Montreal’s commitment to compassionate, holistic care.

Dale Rokosh, former chair of the board of Youville Home, said the amalgamation with Caritas is necessary to strengthen Youville and ensure its financial stability.

“There are efficiencies to be gained (by joining Caritas) that may not be available to us as a small, stand-alone operating unit,” he said.

“So I think that’s what our board sees in this and as we looked forward we said that we might be better off operating under Caritas’ organizational structure.”

There are high hopes the merger could help Youville solve its critical staff shortage. Rokosh said as a small player in the health care field Youville has found it difficult to attract qualified staff to open more beds.

“We have been trying to hire staff and of course we are left right now with 66 beds ready to go but no staff to be able to put the residents into those beds,” he lamented.

“We are hoping that Caritas may be able to attract people in a different way than we can as one small operation sitting here in St. Albert.”

Melded board

Dumelie said some of the former members of the Youville Home board of directors will be asked to join the Caritas board and committee structure “so that we maintain that continuity and we ensure that we have board members from the St. Albert area that help us connect with the community there.”

Youville Home has been a home, a hospital and a continuing care centre since the Grey Nuns founded it in 1863.

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