More than half of the Ontario residents who contacted the Patient Ombudsman's office were patients or residents of long-term care homes who had concerns about their personal health experiences. Along with that, Northern Ontario residents were among the largest group especially with concerns about long-term care homes.
Those are two of the key findings in the recently released annual report of the Patient Ombudsman, titled “Listening, Learning, Leading Change”.
The report was issued Thursday and looks back on the fiscal year of April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025, during which time 4,886 new complaints were logged with the ombudsman, compared to the previous year when the complaints numbered 4,429.
The role of the Patient Ombudsman is to help resolve complaints people have with respect to their experiences with Ontario hospitals, long-term care homes, home care and community surgical and diagnostic centres, the About page on the ombudsman’s website states.
Complaints about public hospitals were disproportionately high in the Toronto region and suggest that the Toronto region complaints are augmented by people from surrounding communities who received care in Toronto hospitals, said the report.
Also similar to last year's report were the high number of complaints from Northern Ontario.
"Complaints about long-term care homes, and home and community care are highest in the North region and may reflect the human resources and geographic challenges of providing care in smaller population centres in a vast geography, " said the report. (P7, 3rd paragraph)
In actual numbers, for written complaints the Toronto area had nine complaints per 100,000 population; Northern Ontario had a higher rate of 13 complaints per 100K population.
The report also revealed there are some matters that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Patient Ombudsman. The office said it cannot offer direct help if the complaint is about a regulated health-care professional (e.g., a physician or nurse), a health-care organization outside our jurisdiction (e.g., a walk-in clinic or retirement home) or if the complaint is part of another complaint proceeding (e.g., a court proceeding).
"When the complaint is outside our jurisdiction, we can navigate patients and caregivers to someone who can help," said the report.
The complaints touched on a variety of concerns representing cultural, psychological and communication differences between patients and caregivers.
In one example, an Indigenous person expressed concern about how they were touched by a PSW (personal support worker) while care was being provided. This involved a sexual assault case.
Following a detailed investigation, staff were recommended to take part in cultural safety training.
In another case, the office investigated a complaint into a hospital’s failure to communicate a cancer diagnosis, which resulted in the cancer spreading and causing the patient significant pain and affecting their quality of life, said the report, which does not specify where the incident occurred.
The case involved a patient admitted to the hospital for orthopedic surgery through the emergency department after a fall that led to a broken bone. Tests were done when the patient was undergoing surgery that showed the underlying cause of the fracture was bone cancer.
However, the cancer diagnosis was never communicated to the patient or to their family, and no treatment was undertaken until the patient acquired a new family doctor and notified the patient’s decision-maker and the hospital. The patient experienced unnecessary and progressive levels of pain, said the report.
Following an investigation, the ombudsman submitted no less than 10 recommendations for the hospital and attending physicians and other caregivers to take corrective action, part of which said hospitals should reduce the administrative burden on doctors.
The hospital was also ordered to conduct a patient audit or review to ensure that no other patients experienced a similar oversight, said the report.
Also in the past year, the Ombudsman office said it launched a tracking tool to monitor the progress of its recommendations.
"To date, 47 per cent of recommendations are fully implemented and 44 per cent are in progress. Some recommendations require significant time and resources before being fully implemented – for example when organizations have to roll out staff training or restructure processes," said the report.
"Reporting on these outcomes provides ongoing transparency and a quick “at-a-glance” view of how health care organizations are moving forward with implementing changes," said the report.
Patients can file complaints online or call in to the Patient Ombudsman call centre.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.