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Calgary Herald Mon Jan 19 2015

Rats scurrying down hospital hallways, chewing through wires and nibbling on food scraps near the cafeteria. These are a few of the recent rodent sightings reported by public health inspectors, nurses and staff members at B.C. Women's and Children's Hospital in Vancouver.

Inspectors issued verbal and written directives after the Dec. 22 visit, according to the environmental health inspection report, which notes: "Minimal pest proofing has been completed to date which is contributing to the difficulty in controlling and abating the rodent activity with the food services." The report also mentions: "A number of food products have been chewed through resulting in products being discarded," and "wiring of equipment chewed on in the retail side which also raises a safety concern." The most recent inspection report lists a "Target Completion Date" for rodent control recommendations as Jan. 27. Taki said the hospital has an action plan in place with the help of the pest control company. "We've asked them to almost quadruple-up on the service until everything gets under control," said Taki.

Fewer than 50 Ontario nursing homes a year have faced the tough new inspections that were supposed to stop abuse and neglect.

residents in the province’s 630 long-term-care homes remain vulnerable

supposed to have been done annually, but now homes will face them once every five years. Of the 5,500 ministry inspections done between July 1, 2010, and Nov. 10, 2012, only 95 were the in-depth kind.

Six years after a scathing auditor general's report found unsafe and degrading conditions in Alberta's long-term care facilities, a followup review has found that Alberta Health Services still hasn't established a uniform provincewide inspection system.

Auditor General Merwan Saher said Tuesday that each AHS zone continues to use "different inspection tools and methods" and that a new, improved system is still on hold after six years because the government hasn't approved updated standards.

Saher said to fulfil the recommendation, AHS must adopt uniform inspection procedures across the province and use a single software program that will allow data to be routinely analyzed for trends.

Ontario nursing home inspectors are so overwhelmed with abuse and other complaints that many of the government’s rigorous new annual inspections will be delayed as long as five years, says the public service union.

In 2011, the ministry received 2,719 complaints from staff, families or other sources. They include critical incidents, such as sexual or physical assault, and important but less urgent issues, such as complaints about unappealing food.

the annual home inspection, which picks up on problems before they become serious

Toronto Star Thu Oct 27 2016

The Ontario coroner's office stopped investigating every 10th nursing-home death three years ago because it decided the province's new - and ultimately flawed - inspection system would provide enough oversight. On paper, the long-term-care law enacted by the province in 2010 appeared tough on nursing homes but, in reality, a huge number of individual complaints swamped provincial inspectors. Seniors advocate Jane Meadus called the coroners' 2013 decision "unfortunately misguided."

Ministry of Health and Long Term Care inspectors, she said, "just look at paper" - if a problem isn't recorded by nursing home staff, the case is closed. "The inspectors are not investigators - the coroners are investigators," said Meadus, a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly. Previously, a coroner would visit the home where a death occurred, review records, interview families and staff and possibly examine the body. Five of the deaths currently under investigation in Woodstock, Ont., and London, Ont., happened prior to 2013, when there were coroner's investigations, and three occurred after investigations ceased.

The performance of hospitals and care homes is to be subject to a new tier of inspection criteria that will include basic standards of care, such as whether an individual has been given adequate food and drink, a senior adviser at the Care Quality Commission has said.

Alan Rosenbach, special policy adviser at the CQC, said that providers that fail to deliver the basics will be fast tracked to prosecution under new powers awarded to the regulator. The new powers will include the ability to place providers into a “quality failure regime.”

the government wanted the regulator to include basic elements of care in its inspection regime.

Toronto Star Mon Feb 9 2015

Canada's biggest pharmacies are selling allergy pills made with ingredients from a drug facility in India that hid unfavourable test results showing excessive levels of impurities in their products, a Star investigation has found. Recently, the Star purchased packs of over-the-counter desloratadine tablets from Toronto-based Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall, Walmart and Costco stores.

One month before, on Dec. 23, Health Canada had announced these antihistamines - made by Pharmascience - were under quarantine after serious problems were unearthed during an inspection of the company's drug facility in India. Inspectors found unsanitary conditions at the facility, including high growth of bacteria and mould. Even though government inspectors discovered significant misconduct dating back to 2012, the December quarantine technically affects only new products made in the past month and a half - not ones already sitting on store shelves.

thousands of Ottawa-area residents learn about improperly sterilized instruments at Farazli’s clinic

That changed in 2010 when, after years of lobbying by endoscopists themselves, revised provincial laws finally outlined safety standards. It also allowed the body that regulates the medical profession to inspect Ontario’s 270 private surgical clinics, which perform procedures ranging from endoscopies to liposuction and plastic surgery

In May, Farazli’s clinic failed an inspection by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The inspection found the clinic’s equipment, used to conduct gastroscopies and colonoscopies, was not always appropriately cleaned between tests.

A private nursing home chain enforced such strict rations on diapers that staff wrapped residents in towels and plastic garbage bags to keep their beds dry.

A resident at a Bradford home who was prone to falls was left alone on a toilet. The resident fell and sustained a head injury.

Residents in a Hamilton home had untreated bedsores and were famished from lack of food.

Toronto Star Tue Sep 23 2014

People's lives were at stake, never mind their health. But you wouldn't know it by the outrageously secretive attitude exhibited by both Toronto Public Health and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Their lack of reporting and openness about a private clinic where a bacterial outbreak made several patients severely ill is breathtaking. The Star's Theresa Boylestory has just reported on the severe health effects two patients now live with after they received spinal injections at the Rothbart Centre for Pain Care in North York. Anne Levac's and Tracey Martin's disabilities were caused by permanent nerve damage from bacterial infections that developed in their spines after the procedures. The disabilities have left them both incontinent and in severe pain. In all, Boyle's investigation found that nine patients were infected with bacteria at the clinic between August and November 2012.

But despite the threat to patients' health, in a web of secrecy that is mind-boggling when lives are at stake, the following occurred: The clinic's doctors did not inform patients about the outbreak, as the College of Physicians requires. Toronto Public Health did not post its inspection results online so doctors could assess whether they should recommend the clinic to patients, never mind so the patients themselves could be fully informed. Toronto Public Health went so far as to make Levac go through an expensive, complicated freedom of information request in an attempt to find out she had been infected at the clinic. Since the outbreak, the college posted online only that the clinic passed three inspections "with conditions" and a fourth without. It did not say there had been an outbreak, that nine patients became ill or that there were 170 inspection-control deficiencies at the clinic. Ironically, Toronto Public Health posts the results of inspection results online for restaurants, tattoo parlours and nail salons. But it does not feel it necessary to post results for clinics. The lack of regard for patients from all levels involved in this health care disaster is symptomatic of what can only be considered a minefield of secrecy in Canada's health care system, in general, that starts at the top with Health Canada, as recent Star investigations have demonstrated. Only by putting patients' interests first and foremost and being as transparent as possible can our health agencies protect consumers. Nothing less should be acceptable.

But hospital pharmacies, which also mix and supply cancer drugs to patients every day, are not subject to regular inspections by the college.

College Registrar Marshall Moleschi said outdated legislation in Ontario’s Drug and Pharmacies Regulation Act exempts hospitals and other health institutions from having to follow the same rules and regulations as community retail pharmacies.

“I was very surprised when I started working in hospitals that the college does not have any role in the pharmacy side in hospitals, especially given the types of products that are made and handled and utilized within hospitals,” Froude told the committee.

It’s taken two months of prodding, a direct order from the government and a long series of meetings, consultations and legal manoeuvres, but the identity of nine taxpayer-funded health clinics that failed recent safety inspections is finally out in the open.

Ontarians will now be able to check online before deciding where to go for cataract surgery, a colonoscopy, liposuction or pain management.

But the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, which performs the inspections, is still withholding some information.

Since 2010, thanks largely to a recommendation that came out of a coroner's inquest into the death of a woman at a Toronto liposuction clinic, all 270 such privately run clinics in the province are now inspected once every five years.

That is a good start, but the regulations do not go far enough

All Ontario hospitals are now required to publicly report their infection rates, hand-washing compliance rates and wait times, among other things.

Seniors in Ontario nursing homes are being beaten, neglected and even raped by the people hired to care for them, a Star investigation has found.

Seniors advocates agree that cases of abuse in long-term care are under-reported. According to the reports the Star obtained, more than 10 residents in Ontario each month are punched, pushed, verbally abused or sexually assaulted. In the majority of the known cases, the abuser was a staff member. In others, the assault was resident on resident.

Eight years after Star stories documenting problems brought a provincial vow of improved care, the same problems exist.

Part I of a multiple-part special series CBC News Posted: Mar 11, 2014

A joint CBC-Radio Canada examination of personal care homes in Saskatchewan provides families with direct access to almost 200 inspection reports.

Saskatchewan has 240 sites, most operated by private sector providers, where more than 3,000 seniors live.

Toronto Public Health, which revealed the outbreaks when pressed by the Star, said 11 patients were infected and tainted sedative injections were the “possible” cause in all cases.

By: Theresa Boyle Health, Published on Sat Sep 27 2014

Three Toronto colonoscopy clinics have had hepatitis C outbreaks since 2011, the Star has learned.

Toronto Star Tue Sep 23 2014

Patients profiled by the Star said no one volunteered to them they were infected at the clinic - not the Rothbart clinic, not James, not Toronto Public Health (TPH), which investigated the outbreak, and not the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), which has regulatory oversight of such clinics, known as "out-of-hospital" premises. The TPH investigation included an infection-control audit, done in conjunction with Public Health Ontario. It found 170 deficiencies, including improperly sterilized equipment. TPH has never made the results of its investigation public. The CPSO inspected the clinic a number of times after the outbreak. Its online register shows it gave the clinic "conditional" passes for three inspections, with conditions related to improving infection control. But there is no mention on the CPSO website there was an outbreak, infection-control breaches or people were made ill. Gelinas said she is "really, really worried" that the province is moving services out of hospitals and into clinics that do not have the same level of oversight and accountability.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins said in a written statement that improving transparency in the health system is a top priority. He noted that the CPSO last year amended a bylaw allowing details of inspection outcomes to be posted on its website. Kacho only learned on Saturday evening that her meningitis was linked to her treatment at the clinic. That's when she said she got a "shocking" phone call from a TPH official. TPH has been trying to reach the nine patients infected since Friday, the day before the Star article appeared. "We are in the process of contacting these individuals as a courtesy and to ensure transparency. Our goal is to ensure that patients were aware that an investigation that they were part of was likely going to be profiled by a media outlet," TPH spokesperson Lenore Bromley said. TPH earlier this month told the Star that the infected patients had been contacted during the outbreak, at which time they were informed of the investigation into the clinic and told there had been breaches in infection control.

Vancouver Sun Thu Jun 11 2015

A provincial proposal to shrink surgical waiting times by letting private surgery clinics do more complex operations could take up to two years to implement, says the registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. That's because of changes to legislation that may be required to allow private facilities to keep patients for up to three nights and other changes to ensure they are more like hospitals, with security guards, full meals, a variety of health professionals, labs, imaging suites and even intensive-care units. Currently, the college allows private facilities to do procedures requiring a maximum one-night stay. "We applaud the minister of health for thinking outside the box to address the issue of access to care," said the registrar, Dr. Heidi Oetter, referring to the idea of expanding publicly funded access to private facilities. The proposal is in a Health Ministry discussion paper.

In an interview, Oetter said expanding the types of surgeries the province pays for at private clinics is not easy to sort out quickly. "There's a role for the private facility sector. But this requires an extensive review," said Oetter, adding it could take from 18 to 24 months. The government has set up a Surgical Services Secretariat that will work with the college on changes to laws and procedures to enable longer stays in private facilities, if that direction is chosen.

An investigation by the Daily Mail [1] has revealed that hospital food inspections are failing to reflect the true quality of hospital meals and patient concerns about what they’re being fed. 

The Mail’s revelations echo the findings of a new briefing called ‘Time to come clean about hospital food’, published today by the Campaign for Better Hospital Food [2]. It shows that hospital food inspections regularly award patient meals an approval rating of more than 90%, when it is calculated by the independent Care Quality Commission to be closer to 50% [

It also finds that hospitals are wrongly declaring that they are meeting the government’s “legally-binding” basic food standards [4], published in August 2014 [5].