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Ontario Hasn’t Inspected 98% Of Care Homes For PPE, Infection Protocol

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton are briefed on rapid COVID-19 test kits at Humber River Hospital in Toronto on Nov. 24, 2020.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton are briefed on rapid COVID-19 test kits at Humber River Hospital in Toronto on Nov. 24, 2020.

TORONTO — The Ford government proactively inspected 11 — or less than two per cent — of the province’s 651 long-term care homes from March 1 until October 15 this year, the province’s commission said in a report Friday.

The government’s 2018 decision to cut proactive inspections meant issues with infection prevention and personal protective equipment (PPE) weren’t identified ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission said.

Under the previous Liberal government, almost all long-term care homes received annual “resident quality inspections” (RQIs). The Ford government now focuses on inspecting high-risk homes, leaving out the vast majority.

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Only 27 homes had an RQI in 2019, the first full year the Progressive Conservatives were in power, the commission’s report said.

“This reduction in RQIs which are intended to provide a holistic review of operations in the homes left the Ministry with an incomplete picture of the state of Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) and emergency preparedness,” the commission said in its new interim report.

“This is a key gap as RQIs are the only resident-focused inspections that must include a review of IPAC. By their nature, a complaint about day-to-day issues in a home is very unlikely to identify problems with equipment and processes that would be used in an emergency.

‘No indications’ the government did inspections when pandemic began

“Importantly, we have found no indications that proactive RQIs were initiated by the [ministry] when COVID-19 outbreaks began globally.”

The government still does inspections when there is a critical incident, like an injured resident, or when a resident or family member complains.

Ontario announced the commission into what went wrong in long-term care in May. It started its work early after soldiers exposed horrific conditions in five homes that were hit particularly hard by the virus.

The majority of Ontario’s COVID-19 deaths are linked to long-term care....

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