SGAP is concerned by the Ontario government’s proposal to restrict public on-line access to long-term care (LTC) home inspection reports to three years. These reports are important to hold nursing homes accountable to the public. The Ontario government’s rationale for this makes no sense.

The proposal was part of a bill tabled last week by the Minister of Red Tape Reduction, Andrea Khanjin. By definition “red tape” is a process that is excessively slow and/or expensive because of unnecessary bureaucracy. Yet, limiting the duration that these reports are online does nothing to reduce red tape.

To add insult to injury, Ontario government spokesperson, Mark Nesbitt, wrote in an email “By setting a three-year publication period for reports, the government is ensuring the public has access to relevant and accurate information that reflects each long-term care home’s current performance.” Does the Ontario government actually think the people cannot look at a publication date and determine relevance themselves?

The final kicker in that the Ontario government will make reports older than three years available to the public “upon request”. Currently, if you want to see a four-year-old or a 14 year-old inspection report for an Ontario nursing home, you can look that up in seconds on an online web site. If this bill becomes legislation, the requests for these older reports will be slower and more expensive because the “upon request” will be handled by an unnecessary bureaucracy. Ironically, the Protect Ontario by Cutting Red Tape bill is creating … more red-tape and less protection for Ontarians in nursing homes.

The only benefactor to this three-year limitation is the nursing homes with something to hide – nursing homes that the Ontario government’s own inspectors found serious problems with. Why is the Ontario government assisting such nursing homes with their cover-up? The government’s duty is to enforce their Long-Term Homes Care Act which should provide a standard of care to patients in LTCs and value to Ontario taxpayers who subsidize this cost.