Ontario's first patient ombudsman, Christine Elliott, isn't surprised her office has fielded about 1,500 complaints since first opening on July 1, 2016.
The former Whitby-Oshawa MPP and health-care critic for the Progressive Conservatives said to date, about 80 per cent of those cases have been resolved.
The patient ombudsman has jurisdiction over hospitals, Community Care Access Centres and long-term care homes.
“I think the fact we've received 1,500 complaints in less than a year of being open is a clear indication of the need for this office,” Elliott said in a phone interview with Sudbury.com.
“The issues are very personal, and very sad sometimes. We knew there were a lot of people waiting for our office to open. Many of those complaints were filed within the first few months, but the momentum has kept up.”
Provincially, the majority of complaints have to do with a lack of communication, or a perceived lack of communication, she said.
“That's where we've been able to be successful, being that objective third party and being able to look at things with fresh eyes,” Elliott said. “We're maybe suggesting different responses, maybe some out-of-the-box suggestions that perhaps hadn't been thought of.”
Her role isn't to take sides. She's not a patient advocate.
“As an ombudsman, we seek fairness in health care,” she said. “We listen to both sides, and we make recommendations only if we see some evidence of unfairness.”
Elliott was on a northern tour this week, which included stops in North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Espanola and Sudbury. She met with the LHIN, patients and families and health-service providers while in Sudury.
Regionally, in Northern Ontario, much of the complaints she receives is about co-ordination of care and access to health-care services.
“I can't discuss any specific cases, but in the north, generally, most complaints relate to co-ordination of care and access of care, given the huge geography that has to be covered to provide services to people in many small communities,” she said.
Much like the Ontario ombudsman, Elliott doesn't have the power to force anyone to do anything with the recommendations her office brings forward as a result of her investigations.
“We only have the power of moral suasion, and we try to persuade health-sector organizations to follow our recommendations.”
In the case of complaints dealing with hospitals, the patient ombudsman gets involved only after the internal complaint method within that hospital is exhausted, Elliott said.
However, Elliott said she sees it as a very collaborative process, because if recommendations are to be made, the people at the hospitals and long-term care homes are the ones on the front lines, and they know what is and isn't going to work.
“Our hope is to come out with recommendations that are mutually agreed upon,” she said. “Health is one of those areas where you need to be collaborative, because you often aren't just trying to resolve a situation for a specific individual patient, but you're trying to fix systemic problems in the process.”
Most of the patients and family members who seek out the patient ombudsman do so, because they want to see positive change in the system, she said. They don't want to see other people have that same negative experience.
“That is why it's important I work with patients and the health-care sector to improve the overall system,” she said. “If they aren't willing to do so, or we're making recommendations that don't make sense, that doesn't help anybody.”
Elliott said she enjoyed her trip to the north, and has plans to venture even further north to the remote coastal areas to get a better understanding of the health care priorities.
“I feel very honoured to be in this role,” she said. “We conducted extensive consultations across the province with patients and caregivers, as well as health-sector organizations, just to understand what they want our office to do for them, and how they wanted to interact with us.
“That information was really helpful to us in setting up our office, because our goal is to be patient-centred, just as we're striving to make our health-care sector patient-centred.”
A permanent website has been set up at patientombudsman.ca with more information available on what you can expect from Elliott and her staff. There's also a downloadable complaint form that can be filled out and submitted electronically.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for people to submit their complaints.”
