Ontario calls cases of bedsores unacceptable

New minister agrees province must ‘strengthen’ compliance by homes caring for seniors

Ontario’s new associate minister of long-term care says she is “saddened and troubled” by photographs of gaping, infected bedsores published in a Star investigation on Wednesday.

“This is simply not acceptable,” Dipika Damerla said in a written statement. “We must do more to ensure that incidents such as these do not occur.”

Damerla said she has told the ministry to look at changes to “strengthen” nursing home compliance — the inspections that are supposed to protect the elderly and hold nursing homes to account. Damerla did not say how or when this will be done.

France Gélinas, New Democrat health critic at Queen’s Park, said the bedsore pictures of 88-year-old Fatemeh Hajimoradi and Dorothy Benson, 93, are a sobering reminder that there’s no strict oversight of nursing homes by the ministry or the Ontario Coroner’s Office. “There are usually no repercussions, there’s no followup and no inquests. It’s so disrespectful,” Gélinas said.

In the case of Hajimoradi, who developed two serious pressure ulcers while in Mississauga’s Erin Mills Lodge, the ministry inspector interviewed staff at the home but not her granddaughter, who filed the complaint.

Fariza Trinos, a 30-year-old Bay Street sales co-ordinator, didn’t know the inspector had discounted her complaint until the Star sent her a copy of its findings.

The inspector didn’t visit the home until two months after Hajimoradi permanently moved into the hospital. Trinos said the inspector later told her photographs are not considered because of the possibility they could be digitally manipulated.

“I feel like they just went in and accepted everything the home said,” Trinos said. “We didn’t even get a chance to respond.”

New owners have taken over Erin Mills Lodge, and in an interview an official at the home cited a low incidence of bedsores. mwelsh@thestar.ca