established in 2015, the patient
ombudsman
handles complaints related to ontario’s health-care sector. this is its second report since the pandemic began. between june 30, 2020 and april 30, 2021, the agency received about 3,000 complaints, of which 1,076 were directly tied to the pandemic.
complaints about long-term care were down from the early “catastrophic” days of the pandemic’s first wave, thompson said, but even so, two out of every three ltc complaints were pandemic related.
the report contains heartbreaking anecdotes about the toll covid has had on seniors. in one case, a husband who had visited his wife daily in her ltc home was barred from seeing her at all.
“the family had video calls with the resident where her mother cried the entire call, believing she had been abandoned and not understanding the reasons that visits had stopped,” the report notes.
that isolation has had profound effects, thompson said.
“we hear that so often from a family member or caregiver who gets in and finally has eyes on their loved one and they’re seeing the decline that’s taken place.”
most of the complaints from hospitals involved restrictive visitation protocols or “confusing or inadequate communications”. others complained of delayed treatments. in one case, a father complained that his adult daughter’s chemotherapy for
breast cancer that was initially delayed for two weeks ended up being postponed for two months.