Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter tabled his 2010 Annual Report on Monday.
In what can be described as an addendum to his special report in October, McCarter paid particularly close attention to the health care sector, appropriately reminding “this area accounts for almost 40% of government spending.”
“We know that staying in hospital longer than medically necessary can be bad for a patient’s health,” said McCarter.
“It can also mean someone else has to wait longer than necessary for hospital care, and it is needlessly expensive. Although a number of initiatives have been introduced to improve patient discharge processes, our hospitals and other health-care facilities need to do better with regard to the safe and timely discharge of patients.”
Auditor General McCarter also touched upon casino oversight, deteriorating college infrastructure, inaccurate property assessments and The Family Responsibility Office.
Among his findings:
• Casino patrons would have difficulty finding out about the maximum prize payout on slot machines. This is useful information and an important disclosure should the machine malfunction and incor¬rectly award a multi-million dollar jackpot, something that has happened twice in the last two years.
• Eleven of the province’s 14 CCACs had about 10,000 people on wait-lists for home-care services, with the wait ranging from an average of eight days to 262 days. The other three CCACs had no wait-lists.
• Assessments by CCACs to determine the extent of their clients’ needs were often not done on a timely basis, with some clients waiting as long as 15 months for assessments.
• Emergency wait times for patients with serious conditions sometimes reached 12 or more hours—significantly longer than the province’s eight-hour target.
• Emergency patients who needed to be admitted to hospital waited an average of about 10 hours for an in-patient bed, and some waited 26 hours or more.
• According to the asset management system, as of April 2010, the backlog of needed maintenance and repairs at colleges was estimated to be well over $500 million. This backlog has been increasing annually and could reach $1 billion in 15 years.
• More than $70 million of the repair backlog has been classified as critical and should be dealt with in the next year.
• Although the Corporation’s target is to inspect each residential property in the province at least once every 12 years, the actual inspection cycle is closer to 18 years.
• Call volume to the The Family Responsibility Office’s toll-free call centre—the primary means for customer service—is so over¬whelming that 80% of calls never get through.
• The Family Responsibility Office spent $21 million over more than three years to develop a state-of-the-art IT system but abandoned the project in 2006 without a new system in place.
Source: Office of the Auditor General of Ontario
In what can be described as an addendum to his special report in October, McCarter paid particularly close attention to the health care sector, appropriately reminding “this area accounts for almost 40% of government spending.”
“We know that staying in hospital longer than medically necessary can be bad for a patient’s health,” said McCarter.
“It can also mean someone else has to wait longer than necessary for hospital care, and it is needlessly expensive. Although a number of initiatives have been introduced to improve patient discharge processes, our hospitals and other health-care facilities need to do better with regard to the safe and timely discharge of patients.”
Auditor General McCarter also touched upon casino oversight, deteriorating college infrastructure, inaccurate property assessments and The Family Responsibility Office.
Among his findings:
• Casino patrons would have difficulty finding out about the maximum prize payout on slot machines. This is useful information and an important disclosure should the machine malfunction and incor¬rectly award a multi-million dollar jackpot, something that has happened twice in the last two years.
• Eleven of the province’s 14 CCACs had about 10,000 people on wait-lists for home-care services, with the wait ranging from an average of eight days to 262 days. The other three CCACs had no wait-lists.
• Assessments by CCACs to determine the extent of their clients’ needs were often not done on a timely basis, with some clients waiting as long as 15 months for assessments.
• Emergency wait times for patients with serious conditions sometimes reached 12 or more hours—significantly longer than the province’s eight-hour target.
• Emergency patients who needed to be admitted to hospital waited an average of about 10 hours for an in-patient bed, and some waited 26 hours or more.
• According to the asset management system, as of April 2010, the backlog of needed maintenance and repairs at colleges was estimated to be well over $500 million. This backlog has been increasing annually and could reach $1 billion in 15 years.
• More than $70 million of the repair backlog has been classified as critical and should be dealt with in the next year.
• Although the Corporation’s target is to inspect each residential property in the province at least once every 12 years, the actual inspection cycle is closer to 18 years.
• Call volume to the The Family Responsibility Office’s toll-free call centre—the primary means for customer service—is so over¬whelming that 80% of calls never get through.
• The Family Responsibility Office spent $21 million over more than three years to develop a state-of-the-art IT system but abandoned the project in 2006 without a new system in place.
Source: Office of the Auditor General of Ontario
