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Inspectors interview 40 residents at full inspections but will be able to question only 20 residents and will no longer be permitted to interview family council members during “light” inspections.

Many of the key activities inspectors formally observe in full inspections will also be out-of-bounds, including security, emergency plans, quality improvement, staffing levels, personal support services, dining, home responses to aggressive residents, hospitalization and changes in health conditions.

The changes please Candace Chartier, chief executive of the Ontario Long Term Care Association, who said the annual inspections drained too much time and resources from nursing homes and the ministry alike. The time saved can be used in other ways to improve care, she said.

But an advocate for the elderly says the Liberal government has taken a step backwards from its 2013 pledge to protect residents of nursing homes.

“I’m very concerned about the changes,” said Jane Meadus of the Toronto-based Advocacy Centre for the Elderly. “There will be more issues at homes because there will be less eyes on those homes.”

The changes in how Ontario will inspect nursing homes landed in the lap of Health Minister Eric Hoskins two weeks ago, when Premier Kathleen Wynne shuffled her cabinet and assigned him responsibility for nursing homes that had been looked after by an associate minister, Dipika Damerla.

Asked by The London Free Press if fewer full inspections would harm residents of nursing homes, Hoskins issued a statement, saying that changes were needed but nothing had been finalized — the latter claim at odds with what the Long Term Care Association said it was told by ministry officials at last week’s meeting in Mississauga.