What is going on at Sunset Manor?

Full Disclosure: Sunset Manor is a public, long-term care facility in Collingwood, Ont. The author has no patients at the facility, with his only patient interaction being while on call. In his personal experience, the nature of those calls has been no different from those at other long-term care homes. In June of 2021, the Ministry of Long-Term Care issued an order to stop admissions immediately to Sunset Manor in Collingwood. According to the CTV News Barrie report: The Ministry stopped admissions because of a belief “that there is a risk of harm to the health or well-being of residents in the home or persons who might be admitted as residents.” Sunset Manor received “several written notifications and compliance orders” for not following requirements highlighted after inspections between July 2018 and April 2021. The Ministry stated, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the licensee cannot or will not properly manage the long-term care home or cannot do so without assistance.” This last point shocked me most. Bureaucrats generally tend to use bland, inoffensive language to avoid controversy. I’ve lived through some pretty bad healthcare facility situations in my time and have never seen a sentence that strong. Read: All Ontarians should hope new health minister Sylvia Jones succeeds As I write this, Simcoe County’s website lists Jane Sinclair as the General Manager of Health and Emergency Services for Sunset Manor, which would make her the admin person in charge of the place. The CTV News report stated that Jane Sinclair called the ministry’s report “excessive,” adding, “We don’t agree with the level of severity of these ministry findings.” Over a year later, Sunset Manor still isn’t allowed to accept new patients, and an exclusive article on Collingwood Today suggests why. In brief, Sunset Manor is alleging that the investigations were tainted because an ex-employee of Sunset Manor, Katy Harrison, was part of the Ministry Inspection team. Jane Sinclair swore out an affidavit that she told the Ministry the termination of the ex-employee was “not amicable.” Sinclair further states she complained to the Ministry in 2019 about having an ex-employee do an inspection stating she “could not conduct a fair and impartial inspection of the home.” However, the Ministry elected to have her continue inspecting Sunset Manor as a “junior” member of the team. They state the allegations of bias are “spurious and unsupported by evidence” and that multiple officials inspected Sunset Manor, not just Harrison. There’s a whole set of details about the inspection process in the Collingwood Today article that I won’t bore you with. But I will note that the article points to four further inspections of Sunset Manor since last June, none by Harrison, and the facility remains closed to new admissions. Read: What role should nurse practitioners play in fixing healthcare? Generally speaking, the admin person at an LTC would report to the representative of the owners (in this case the County of Simcoe) to inform them how things are going. As I write this blog, the County of Simcoe’s website indicates that person is Mark Aitken, the CAO and one of his responsibilities is overall management for long-term care and seniors services. Yet another wrinkle thrown into this mess is that Mark Aitken is married to Jane Sinclair. (Yes, I know it was a letter to the editor, but it has gone un-retracted which the press would do if it was challenged.) In summary, Sunset Manor has been repeatedly investigated by the Ministry of Health over the past four years. One of the investigators was an ex-employee whom the Manor feels was biased. As a result of investigations, Sunset Manor has not been allowed to admit new residents to the facility for over a year. The Administrator answers to the owner (or in this case, the owner’s representative) who happens to be her husband. The response of the owners is to sue the Ministry, alleging the inspections were biased and unfair. Here’s my take: 1) It was wrong of the Ministry to allow an ex-employee to investigate Sunset Manor. I’m in no way suggesting that Miss Harrison acted inappropriately,but optics matter. If you’re going to level the most serious punishment possible to a long-term care facility you need to make sure that there’s absolutely no margin for people to think that that punishment is anything other than completely justified. 2) Similarly, the administrator of Sunset Manor should not be reporting to her husband. The Administrator may have handled the situation perfectly, but again optics matter. The public needs to be reassured that if the Administrator made a mistake, appropriate action would be taken, and people won’t believe that if your spouse is your boss. 3) You know how there are people like Dr. Samir Sinha who writes articles about stopping private nursing homes? Or tweet incessantly that public long-term care facilities are better? Sunset Manor is public. This situation has been allowed to drag on for over a year to the point where, according to Collingwood Today, there are now 43 empty beds at Sunset Manor. While four compliance orders have been lifted, the home was fined another $5,500 for failing to comply with medication management. It should never have come to this. It’s a travesty when we have so many people waiting for long-term care beds. I recently had a patient wait over 90 days in hospital for one. Getting Sunset Manor open again would really help our community. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong here, but hopefully whatever needs to be done there gets done, and our seniors can once again get the care they deserve, in the location they need. Dr. Sohail Gandhi is a former president of the OMA and opinions are his and not necessarily the opinions of the OMA Board. This article is a reprint from his blog site: justanoldcountrydoctor.com. Read: COVID is not over and it won't ever be

What is going on at Sunset Manor?

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