Patient Ombudsman is a champion for fairness in Ontario’s health sector organizations defined as public hospitals, long-term care homes and home and community care services coordinated by the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs, formerly CCACs).
What do we mean by fairness?
Many Ombuds offices use the principle of fairness when looking at the issues and circumstances that make up a complaint or concern.
Achieving a level of fairness for everyone involved in the review of complaint is also key to our resolution process at Patient Ombudsman.
Ombudsman Saskatchewan uses a “Fairness Triangle” to describe how it achieves fair resolutions to complaints about government services. Patient Ombudsman has adapted Saskatchewan’s approach to our unique role in resolving and investigating complaints from patients and caregivers about their healthcare experiences. We worked closely with our front-line complaints team and consulted with patient and caregiver advisors, healthcare patient relations specialists and others to develop our version of the Fairness Triangle.
The Fairness Triangle is not a checklist. The Fairness Triangle is a set of principles or considerations that Patient Ombudsman applies in analyzing a complaint and testing if a resolution is fair.