Questions have been raised as to why health chiefs allowed Luke Caines to remain at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital’s Continuing Care Unit for almost 40 years — and why they have now agreed that he be given a new home at Summerhaven.

Born prematurely in 1960, Mr Caines was initially able to walk using braces and attended the Friendship Vale School.

But his condition gradually deteriorated and, after his mother died in 1974, it was decided to house him at KEMH, ten years before Sommerhaven was built.

“We were all very young — that’s what the family came up with,” Mr Caines said in his interview with The Bermuda Sun in October 2010.

When first questioned about the move last week, a Bermuda Hospitals Board spokesman said that plans were put in place only after Mr Caines made a formal request last year.

That position was confirmed in a statement by David Harries, the Chief of Geriatric, Rehabilitative and Palliative Care at KEMH who oversees CCU resident care.

“CCU was the only available home for him [Mr Caines] for most of this time here,” Dr Harries said. “Certainly, we respected his wish to move when he raised it for the first time last year. However, we can confirm that there was no bed available for Luke until about a year ago. We do not know the cost of his residence at Summerhaven, but as this is what he wants, we fully support the move and are very happy for Luke.”

However, a Royal Gazette investigation has discovered that Mr Caines has frequently and publicly expressed his frustration at being detained at the CCU in the past — and that officials chose to ignore his requests for a move.

And, Summerhaven Trust chairman John Powell claims he personally contacted the BHB five years ago after learning about Mr Caines’ plight.

Mr Powell offered to provide Mr Caines a place at Summerhaven, but the offer was rejected by the BHB.

According to Mr Powell, he was told that Mr Caines had become “institutionalised” after so long at CCU and was therefore not a suitable candidate for Summerhaven.

In The Bermuda Sun article in which Mr Caines and his sister made an appeal for a new wheelchair, Mr Caines revealed that he found the CCU “boring”, while his sister said that her brother never wanted to return to the facility after day trips out. Asked why the BHB made no effort to ask Mr Caines if he wanted to leave the CCU following that interview, the spokesman replied: “BHB did not have a formal request to move him from Luke or his family before last year, despite comments made in the Bermuda Sun article … and there were no placements available before that time anyway.

“In the Bermuda Sun article his sister might well have said he did not want to come back to the hospital from a home environment when he met with his family, but this is not the same as the family or Luke asking for him to be moved. The article was not even about them asking for him to be moved, but for fundraising for a wheelchair in CCU.

“BHB will do what it can to facilitate the transfer, as it is what Luke wants, but BHB cannot force another residential facility to prepare for and take a CCU resident. I think it would be very unfair to turn this into blaming BHB for not moving him.”

The Royal Gazette also asked why the BHB did not follow up on Summerhaven’s offer to provide Mr Caines a home five years ago.

We also asked if the BHB could confirm it turned down the offer on the grounds that Summerhaven was not regarded as a suitable facility. And, we also asked why, if the BHB regarded Summerhaven as unsuitable five years ago, it was now willing to place Mr Caines there.

No response to those questions was received by press time last night. A friend of Mr Caines has now raised concerns that Mr Caines was kept at the CCU because he was a “cash cow” for the unit.

The friend, who asked not to be named, suggested that Government had provided BHB with a subsidy of $13,000-a-month to cover the cost of his care — but the actual cost of his care to the BHB was considerably less.

“At one point I was told by staff in CCU not to talk to Luke about alternative accommodation as he was begging to be moved, they did not want his hopes raised and he ‘isn’t going anywhere’,” the friend said “I remain convinced that Luke is a cash cow for BHB.”

The friend also noted that BHB’s agreement to move Mr Caines coincided with a recent Government decision to shut down the unit — and cut its funding from $14 million last year to a $10 million grant this year.

In July, 2013, then-Health Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin revealed that the ageing facility was winding down because it was “inappropriate” to keep patients there.

“If the CCU closes, it will not be in the next few days, the next few weeks or even the next few months. Any closure will be done over the course of at least two years,” the Minister said.

No new admissions have been allowed at the facility since then and, according to the BHB spokesman the number of residents has dropped from around 100 in 2013 to just 79 now.

The majority of patients are extremely elderly and die on average within about 18 months of arrival.

“Of course Luke doesn’t fit in with the two-year closure deadline — he’s not like the majority of patients who are seeing out their final days there,” the friend said. “I suspect that this, more than anything else, is why the hospital now all of a sudden seems so eager to have Luke moved. It has nothing to do with his wishes, which have been ignored for years, and everything to do with the fact that the CCU is going to shut down and the subsidy for Luke has been cut. They needed to farm him out to someone else.”

That view was supported by Summerhaven chairman John Powell, who said that he was first approached earlier this year by a hospital social worker who asked if Mr Caines and three other CCU patients could move into the facility.

Mr Powell said he believed the approach was made because the CCU was shutting down, and long-term residents such as Mr Caines needed to be placed elsewhere. “It was the intended closure of the CCU that prompted Luke’s move and it was his medical social worker who got the ball rolling,” he said.