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About the public reports on long term care homes Have you visited the web site of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care? It now offers on-line reports on all long term care homes in the province, including the Bennett. Here’s what you should know about these reports. Inspections Every year, the government sends someone to inspect our home. The inspector measures our programs and services against a set of 37 standards and 426 criteria or regulations. These include, for example, nursing care, safe drug storage, the temperature of meals, charting methods, training of volunteers, whether a resident’s dentures are labeled, and how often staff check supply carts. Sometimes the inspector issues a “finding” (an unmet standard or criterion) about an area of care or service that could improve. Some findings relate to resident care much more directly than others. That’s why you should pay attention to the specific types of findings, not just the number. Within ten days of any finding, we send the Ministry a compliance plan to address the problem, and we put it into effect right away. You can see this plan on the bulletin board near our nursing station. The findings you see are history The reports you see on the Ministry web site are 6 to 18 months out of date. If there are inspection findings, we will have fixed them already. There may even have been another inspection since the one in the on-line report. We monitor care in many ways While we welcome Ministry inspections and reporting to help us find ways to improve care, we do so in other ways too:
Verified concerns Sometimes, family members write formal letters of complaint about a home. If the Ministry finds that the concern is valid and justified, it goes on record as a Verified Concern. We are proud of our record in this area; the letters we receive from families are almost always letters of appreciation. We enjoy working with families to resolve any concerns they may have, before they ever reach the formal complaint stage. How else can you compare homes?
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