Nova Scotia plans to publicly report long-term care abuse

The province says it is working toward publicly reporting incidents ofabuse in Nova Scotia long-term care homes.

Right now, dataon abuse cases is not made public and is only availablethrough requests made under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

A recent CBC News investigation revealed there were46 substantiated cases of abuse in long-term care facilities over a two-year period.

That kind of information is easily accessible tothe public in Alberta and Manitoba, the only other provinces that have laws similar to Nova Scotia's Protection for Persons in Care Act, which is an extra safeguard for people in hospitals, residential care facilitiesand nursing homes.

Those provinces produce annual reports that includethe number of complaints received, the number of investigations conducted, the type of facility where the incident is alleged to have occurred, the type of abuse reportedand the outcome of the investigation.

The Nova Scotia government saidit is working on providing similar public reporting.

"We've had several meetings already internally to move that work forward, so I'm hopeful that it will be very soon," said Bob Lafferty, Nova Scotia's manager of investigations and compliance for the Protections of Persons in Care Act.

Neither Lafferty or Health Minister Randy Delorey would commit to a timeline.

"I think it's important," Delorey said. "As a government, not just in our health-care system, but collectively, we recognize the importance of transparency and the value of information to our citizens."

Lafferty saidhis team is trying to determine what information can be released.

"It's a fine line between transparency and the sensitive nature of the PPCA investigation and respecting the privacy of those individuals involved, so we're really juggling that fine line between the two."