Care home inspection records going online
April 1 target date for launch
The Ministry of Health is making a move to post personal care home inspection reports online for the public to see.
“It’s information we believe the public values, and positions them to have a comfort that the safety that they need in these establishments is there,” said Richard Moen, manager of special projects for the health ministry. Personal care homes are privately-run residences where staff help people with daily living. There are currently 158 of them licensed to operate in Saskatchewan. The health ministry inspects them at least once every two years before renewing their licenses.
Currently, the equivalent of five full-time inspectors are on contract with the ministry, travelling around the province and inspecting these homes, said Dawn Skalicky-Souliere, director of licensing for the ministry.
As the ministry looks at ways to do its work more efficiently, staff decided the pen- and- paper checklist method inspectors currently use is outdated, and results in cumbersome data entry work, Moen said.
Public health inspectors who work for regional health authorities and are tasked with monitoring water and sewage treatment plants, restaurants and eating establishments, swimming pools, hotels and more, use the same pencil and paper system.
In mid-July, the health ministry issued a request for proposals for a new electronic data management system for personal care homes and public health inspection records. The competition closed Wednesday, and the ministry hopes to choose a supplier within a couple of weeks, Moen said.
If all goes smoothly, he’d like to see a new electronic system go live by April 1, 2014.
Restaurant and eatery inspections are already publicly available online. The reports are typed into a database manually.
Inspection records for personal care homes, however, are only available by filing a freedom of information request to the ministry, Skalicky-Souliere said.
More transparency about personal care homes would be a welcome development to Cheryl Loadman, the coordinator of the Age-Friendly Saskatoon project.
In the first phase of the project, which surveyed 500 older Saskatonians or their caregivers, she found people were frustrated with the lack of information available about personal care homes.
Posting inspection results online would give older adults and their families better information when choosing a home, some of which can be expensive, Loadman said.
Right now the only source of information about the quality of personal care homes is by word of mouth, she said.
“I think anybody has the right to ask that question when they’re accessing private care home services, and I think having inspections online (is beneficial) so they can just go and see, are they serving healthy meals? Are they cleaning their bathrooms? Do they have the staff on they said they would have?”
Jeanette Waldner, the manager of North Haven Personal Care Home in Smeaton, said she welcomes more transparency for inspection records.
“Anything that would improve personal care homes is a good thing,” she said.
Vivienne Hauck, the CEO of LutherCare Communities, said the change will give residents and families more comfort with a facility.
“I have no problem with that. We’re very transparent if people want to find out about that,” she said.
Moen doesn’t know how long it will take the ministry to have all inspectors toting tablets and entering data digitally on the job. Details about exactly how the records will be displayed are also scarce at this stage. Moen’s hope is that data will appear online more quickly than it does now for restaurant inspections.