Despite Ontario's commitment to crack down, nursing institutions with a history of breaches continue to do so.

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Kirti Pathak
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Nursing Homes

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Long-term care homes in Ontario continue to flout the law without incurring substantial punishments, resulting in terrible repercussions for the province's elders. Following a year in which the long-term care system revealed flaws, with 3,773 individuals dying of COVID-19 in Ontario nursing homes, governments vowed better circumstances for individuals in long-term care.

However, provincial inspectors continue to issue major violations of Ontario's Long-Term Care Act to some homes. In the spring and early summer of 2020, 70 residents of Orchard Villa in Pickering, Ont., perished of COVID-19, the province's bloodiest epidemic of the first wave. Since then, the house has been cited twice for infection prevention and control violations: first in November 2020 and again in April of this year.

The most typical action was taken by inspectors when a home is found to have broken a part of the Long-Term Care Homes Act that regulates it is a written notice, in which the home is alerted that they have done something wrong and asked to correct it. Each year, thousands of these letters are sent out, but the problems often continue.

A violation may result in a Voluntary Plan of Correction, which is not a necessary measure as the name implies. The province can also issue Compliance Orders, which guarantee that inspectors will return to check on the matter. Only about 1% of offenses result in Director's Referrals, the most punitive sanction. Two examples include mandatory orders to place a home under new management (a method that has been used in homes dealing with COVID-19) and the cancellation of a license. In 2017, the Ministry of Health revoked the license of a care home in Trout Creek, Ont., due to ongoing management issues.

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There was a clause in the bill that would have allowed inspectors to demand that households pay an administrative penalty if they broke the law and didn't rectify the problem when the inspectors came back to check. It was added to Ontario's laws in 2017, however, it was never implemented, therefore no homes have incurred financial fines as a result.

The Auditor General of Ontario recently recommended that sanctions be implemented. The administration, on the other hand, stated that it wished to take a more helpful rather than punitive approach to home inspections.

 

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