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<\/p>\nAn Ontario woman says she’s still distressed over a year after finding her 64-year-old brother dead in his bed, later learning that a nurse who had been providing him with home care failed to follow protocol.<\/p>\n
John Ford of Drayton, a community of about 2,200 residents in Wellington County,\u00a0died on March 26, 2024. Though the coroner said his death was due to natural causes, Ford’s sister,\u00a0Bonnie Ford, wonders if it could have been prevented.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The day before Ford’s body was discovered,\u00a0an Ontario Health at Home nurse contracted from SE Health showed up at his home\u00a0as part of biweekly visits to change his\u00a0wound dressing.<\/p>\n
After Ford didn’t answer the door, the nurse left\u00a0and didn’t follow the agency protocol of\u00a0calling a family member or supervisor, SE Health later said.<\/p>\n
The nurse returned to John’s\u00a0home the next day. After he\u00a0still wasn’t responding to her being at the door, but she heard his\u00a0television was on, she called Bonnie Ford. John’s sister then called police to do a welfare check on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Part of me thought, ‘Maybe he missed the nurse, maybe he went somewhere without telling me, maybe\u00a0he forgot to turn off the TV.’ But I knew \u2014 he’s always there for the nurse. He would pick up the phone. He never left his TV on,” Bonnie said.<\/p>\n
“He would never have missed a nurse’s visit because that was kind of law to him. If the nurse was coming, he was going to be available, just as he had made himself available for the last 10 years or so.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bonnie said she doesn’t know the exact\u00a0time her brother died\u00a0or if his death could have been prevented, adding that getting answers from the nursing agency has been frustrating.<\/p>\n
Answers slow to come<\/p>\n
She said she’s been asking what the protocols are for home-visit nurses\u00a0and whether her brother slipped under the radar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ve been asking Ontario Health at Home and SE Health to have a sit-down conversation to explain their policies and their procedures. It’s been almost two years.\u00a0It’s just unacceptable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than a year after her brother’s death, on\u00a0Feb 27, Bonnie\u00a0received a letter from SE\u00a0Health that\u00a0offered\u00a0“sincere condolences” for John’s death. It also admitted a mistake had been made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The staff member (new to our team) that was providing care to your brother did not follow our established process,” the agency wrote. “In particular, when the scheduled home visit did not occur, she should have escalated this to our co-ordination team that day. That being said, it remains unclear whether this action would have provided life-saving measures.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
WATCH | 2024 video highlights the need for more investments in Ontario home care:<\/p>\n
Health-care advocates call on Ontario to invest more in home care<\/p>\n
A new campaign led by health-care advocates is calling on Ontario to invest more in home care. They say expanding the province\u2019s home care offerings will help reduce hospital wait times and long-term care waitlists. CBC\u2019s Tyler Cheese has the details. <\/p>\n
The agency apologized about being late with its response, and said the nurse and all staff have\u00a0been re-educated on procedures. \u00a0<\/p>\n
SE Health Care told CBC News it can’t\u00a0comment on the Ford case.<\/p>\n
“In general, we can confirm there are clear protocols and contractual guidelines that all home-care service providers must follow when staff are unable to locate a patient for a scheduled visit,” Farah Ismail, one of the company’s vice- presidents, said\u00a0in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bonnie said she has filed a\u00a0complaint\u00a0to Ontario’s patient ombudsman and the College of Nurses of Ontario, which has told Ford that an investigator would be looking into her complaint.<\/p>\n
“I would have gladly gone over on the 25th, if she’d [the nurse] called me to tell me she can’t find him,” Bonnie\u00a0said. “It’s not enough for them to just say, ‘Sorry for your loss. She didn’t follow protocol.’ That’s not enough for me and anybody else who has gone through this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Ontario woman says she’s still distressed over a year after finding her 64-year-old brother dead in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-150612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}