A recent report from CBC has placed Rainycrest Long-Term Care home among the 30 homes in the province with the highest number of written notices.

The article, published online by the CBC on October 23, has compiled data from five years worth of reports stretching from January 1, 2015 through to December 31, 2019 in order to determine the 30 care homes in Ontario with the most written notices, stemming from violations of the Long-Term Care Homes Act. When a home is inspected and a violation is noticed, the home is issued a written notice that subsequently appears on the inspection report. All of the data the CBC combed through was taken from the Ministry of Long-Term Care’s website on August 20, 2020. In total, CBC said it processed more than 10,000 inspection reports from approximately 632 long-term care homes in the province that were operating for all or part of the five year window.

According to the article, Rainycrest had accrued 148 written notices in the time period covered by the data, placing it roughly halfway down the list. The long-term care home with the highest number of notices is Hogarth Riverview Manor in Thunder Bay with 289. Tied for the final position were Extendicare Maple View of Sault Ste. Marie, Heritage Green Nursing Home in Stoney Creek and Shepherd Lodge in Scarborough, all with 110 notices each.

It is important to note that not all violations found during an inspection are dangerous. However, the CBC said it scraped the reports to only include 21 specific violation codes that it said were “the 21 most egregious violations” and included codes “related to abuse, failure to report abuse, reporting abuse; infection control and prevention; medication errors, storage or management; neglect, indicators of neglect like failure to provide baths, insufficient hydration, poor oral care and nutrition violations.”

In a statement provided to the Fort Frances Times, Riverside Health Care president and CEO Henry Gauthier acknowledged that there had been reported violations at Rainycrest during the time period indicated by the CBC report, but that Riverside had taken significant steps to address them. The timeframe the information was compiled from straddles a provincially mandated freeze on new admissions, but Gauthier says the issues have since been resolved.

“At Riverside Health Care, the health and safety of our residents is our top priority,” Gauthier wrote.

“In February 2018 the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care closed the Rainycrest Long Term Care Home to new admissions due to ongoing compliance issues. Since this time, leadership has diligently and collaboratively addressed compliance issues and human resource challenges (management and resident care). The Home reopened to admissions in June 2019 and has been approved for ‘self-management’ by the Ministry starting December 1, 2020. We remain fully committed to providing excellent quality care, in a safe and healthy environment for our residents, staff and families.”

The CBC noted that the government can add or remove reports from its website at any time for a variety of reasons, and so the numbers can fluctuate from day to day. The CBC states that its information is accurate to the date they initially received the information.

Top 30 homes with most ‘written notices’