2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Rob Ferguson)
Liberals are calling on Ontario’s auditor general to investigate a that has left vulnerable home-care patients — some in their final days — without pain medications and other key items. “I’m still hearing the same horror stories that we’ve all been hearing for the last couple weeks,” MPP Adil Shamji (Don Valley East), an emergency room physician, said Monday. Those problems include shortages of drugs, needles and other equipment that in some cases has prompted doctors to send to hospital emergency rooms in their final days.
As well, have been left without IV bags and needles. Others do not have bandages for wound care after surgeries. Health Minister Sylvia Jones has said the troubles are “unacceptable” and that ministry staff are working with suppliers of the new Ontario Health atHome agency to fix them.
Her parliamentary assistant Anthony Leardi (Essex) said Monday that there are “special assistance teams” trying to get supplies to patients and reiterated anyone purchasing supplies out of their own pockets can be reimbursed. But complaints continue rolling in to MPP’s offices, New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles said in backing the Liberal push for an investigation. “They are still not seeing supplies.
Something’s still not working,” she told the legislature’s daily question period. Shamji’s letter to auditor general Shelley Spence requests a value-for-money audit into Ontario Health atHome’s ability to procure and deliver supplies. The agency took over the functions last year under legislation passed by Premier Doug Ford’s government to change the system, making a handful of suppliers and providers responsible for delivering across the province.
Previously, local pharmacies and other suppliers focused on servicing smaller geographic areas. Shamji said he wants to know how the new suppliers were chosen and whether any political connections with the governing Progressive Conservatives were a factor. “Ontarians need to understand why this catastrophe has occurred, how it can be stopped, who will be held accountable and the manner in which it will be prevented in the future,” he wrote in a detailed three-page letter.
“As I write, countless Ontarians do not know if their scheduled home-care appointment will be honoured and, if so, whether the provider will have the necessary medications and supplies.” Spence will deliver her annual report by early December, so it is too late to include any probe into Ontario Health atHome in it. But that does not preclude her auditing teams from investigating if the office determines that’s warranted.
Liberal MPP John Fraser (Ottawa South), who recalled how he and his sisters cared for their elderly parents at home in their final days, said he could not imagine the suffering and frustration at doing it without proper supplies. “It should make all of us angry,” he said, challenging Premier Doug Ford to support the call for an investigation “if he is truly a man of his word.” On Friday, Ford told reporters “they had to pull me off the ceiling” when he first heard reports of the home-care supply problem.
“I actually get calls on my phone saying, ‘I need gauze, I need Band Aids.’ But people are going to be held accountable, as sure as I’m talking to you.”.
