(Quebec) The Minister responsible for Seniors, Sonia Bélanger, announced Wednesday that she has ordered a new investigation to be held at the CHSLD de La Prairie in connection with acts of mistreatment.
“The CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest carried out an internal investigation. As I am not satisfied with […] what I saw as conclusions, […] I asked the ministerial teams to investigate,” she said in the press scrum.
THE Montreal Journal reported Monday that an attendant at the CHSLD in La Prairie allegedly brutalized with punches an 86-year-old woman who suffered from Alzheimer’s a few weeks before her death.
Employees reportedly saw the same attendant punch another resident in the head, and forcibly unfold the arm of a third elderly person who had a stiff body.
Citing the article from Newspaper On Wednesday, Liberal MP Linda Caron pointed out that the man in question had been suspended for three weeks with pay, then relocated, while a whistleblower had been suspended for two weeks without pay.
“It’s unacceptable, it’s even scandalous. What are you going to do? » she asked the minister.
Mme Bélanger responded that, in her opinion, the situation is “inadmissible”, “unjustifiable”.
“I have requested an investigation by our inspection team from the Ministry of Health and Social Services and I will follow the matter very closely,” she promised.
In the press scrum, Minister Bélanger recalled that “mistreatment has zero tolerance” and that “employees have an obligation to disclose.”
“When employees disclose, managers must take charge of the situation,” she stressed. Will it require changes within the CISSS? “I’m going to take it step by step,” she said.
The report from the Department of Health and Human Services inspection team is expected “in the coming days.”