The Long-Term Care Homes Act, 2007 (LTCHA) and Ontario Regulation 79/10 (Regulation) came into force on July 1, 2010 and provides a single legislative authority for safeguarding resident rights, improving the quality of care and improving the accountability of Long-Term Care (LTC) Homes for the care, treatment and well-being of residents.
The LTCHA sets out the requirements for LTC Home resident rights and protections, services, accountabilities, placement rules, system management and compliance inspection and enforcement. The Regulation provides the details to support the requirements of the LTCHA.
The LTCHA and Regulation were developed to improve the resident experience and quality of life in LTC Homes.
To accompany the new legislation, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) created the Long Term Care Homes Quality Inspection Program (LQIP), which is designed to safeguard residents’ well being by continuously investigating complaints, concerns, critical incidents, and by ensuring that all Homes are inspected at least once per year.
The mandate of the Long-Term Care Homes Quality Inspection Program (LQIP) is to:
- Protect residents in Ontario’s LTC Homes
- Safeguard resident rights, safety, security and quality of life and
- Ensure LTC Homes comply with legislation and regulations.
This is achieved by performing unannounced inspections and enforcing measures as required. The MOHLTC conducts complaint, critical incident, follow-up, comprehensive and other types of inspections. At the end of every inspection the MOHLTC inspector prepares an inspection report.
Copies of the public version of the inspection reports detailing all findings of non-compliance are publicly posted in the Home and provided to Residents’ and Family Councils.
To obtain the Home’s inspection report, you can ask the Administrator directly or find it on the Ministry’s website.
