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Update: June 2011-- Have you noticed a team of inspectors from the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care in your LTC home recently? Perhaps your home was a volunteer test site for the new annual inspection process, now known as the Resident Quality Inspection. Since last fall, specially trained inspectors (Master Trainers) have been providing intensive training to Ministry of Health and Long-term Care (MOHLTC) inspectors. Included in the training process were on-site ‘mock' inspections. This initial training was completed this spring, and inspections using the new process have now begun across the province. The new Long-term Care Quality Inspection Program is a major transformation of the inspection system. It was developed to comply with the new Long-term Care Homes Act (LTCHA) which was proclaimed on July 1, 2010. The goal of the new inspection process is to ensure that the provisions of the Act for transparency, accountability, and effective and efficient delivery of high-quality service are being met. The Act promotes the fundamental concept that the LTC home is the resident's home and the annual inspection is designed to ensure that the residents are treated with dignity and their rights respected. As in the previous inspection system, LTC home inspectors are required to inspect a home when a complaint is received, a critical incident is reported, or to follow up on a previous inspection. The inspectors use the specific MOHLTC Inspection Protocols to determine whether or not the home is compliant with the LTCHA. While annual inspections under the new system have only recently begun, critical incidents, complaints and follow-up inspections have been occurring since July 2010. As usual, each inspection visit results in a report. All the reports are public. Long-term care homes are required to post their recent reports in a conspicuous and easily accessible location. If you don't see the reports posted when you visit a home, you should ask at the reception desk. The report identifies the type of inspection, explains the purpose of the visit, lists whom the inspectors interviewed during the course of the inspection, which protocols were used, and the documents reviewed. The reports note whether or not the home was found to be in compliance with the Act and Regulations. If noncompliance is found, the relevant regulation of the Concerned Friends receives electronic copies of every inspection report. Our dedicated volunteer reviewers have been learning the new system and will continue to review and summarize the results of each report.We will be incorporating the new results into our database so that we can continue to track the performance of individual homes. We provide this information to any of our callers who are searching for an appropriate long-term care home or are interested in a home's performance for other reasons. There will not be sufficient annual inspections completed by MOHLTC inspectors by this summer for Concerned Friends to review and analyze them for our usual annual report card on LTC homes. However, we look forward to publishing our first report card based on the new Resident Quality Inspection Program by this time next year. In the meantime, we hope to have our new up-to-date website with current information on LTC Homes available to you soon. Check at www.concernedfriends.ca to see how we are progressing. Also, please don't hesitate to call us at 416-489-0146 or toll-free 1-855-489-0146 for information on individual long-term care homes. |
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