Ontario’s long-term care inspections branch was overwhelmed and “unprepared” during the first wave of COVID-19 says a new report from the province’s ombudsman, who has made 76 recommendations to improve the system.
“Tragically, the Ministry of Long-Term Care was unprepared and unable to ensure the safety of long-term care residents and staff during the pandemic’s first wave” that began in early 2020, wrote Paul Dubé in a report released Thursday morning at Queen’s Park.
“Few knew that this oversight mechanism had fallen apart.”
Since then, however, he notes the ministry has made a number of changes that address at least half of his recommendations.
Long-term care homes were particularly hard-hit during the pandemic, with 4,335 resident and 13 staff COVID-related deaths during the first two years. About half of the deaths occurred between January and August of 2020, the report notes.
“Our investigation identified problems with nearly all aspects of the inspections branch process during the first COVID wave,” the report says. “The ministry was unprepared for a deluge of COVID-related complaints and questions and did not give inspectors practical guidance about how the pandemic should affect its triage and risk assessment process.”
Dubé said a number of complaints were ignored by inspectors — who ceased on-site work from March to June 2020 — and “many people who tried to make complaints about the conditions faced by loved ones in long-term care received ‘key messages’ from inspectors and had their files closed without further review or inspection … Complaints are crucial to guiding the work of the inspections branch, and the breakdown in the system for receiving, assessing and responding to them had a profound impact on the ability of the branch to ensure the safety of long-term care staff and residents during the pandemic.”
Even after inspections into “critical incidents involving COVID-19” resumed in June, inspectors “took limited enforcement action in response to homes that were not submitting critical incident reports as required,” he wrote. “While it is impossible to know what difference a more robust process could have made, the ministry clearly lost a valuable opportunity to inspect and intervene when homes reported outbreaks.”
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