Ottawa retirement home operator issued a compliance order by provincial oversight body

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Ottawa retirement home operator Alavida Lifestyles has been issued a compliance order by the regulatory body that oversees retirement homes in Ontario. The order was made July 3 after a complaint that a resident of its Les Promenades retirement home in Orléans was forced to pay for care services that were not provided by the home, according to the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority.

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Alavida operates several retirement homes and seniors residences in Ottawa. It is the focus of complaints by tenants after some retirement home residents were told to pay hundreds — even thousands — of dollars more a month in fee increases. Alavida is a subsidy of Ashcroft Homes which recently defaulted on a $6.5-million loan, sending three of its Richmond Road condominium properties into receivership.

The compliance order was not directly related to the issue of fee increases, which, unlike rent increases, are largely unregulated in retirement homes. Opposition politicians and families have been calling for better regulations to protect the elderly from such fee increases.

The RHRA said it inspected the home after a complaint relating to plans of care and alleged financial abuse. The inspector found that a resident was being required to pay for care not provided by the home. It also found the company failed to ensure that plans of care were updated to reflect changes in residents’ care needs, and that there were no documented efforts to include information about care being provided by external care providers. It also found the company did not have protocols in place to “promote collaboration between home staff and external care providers.”

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The retirement home authority has ordered the company to demonstrate protocols are in place to “promote collaboration” between staff and external care providers, to demonstrate it has protocols to assess residents returning to the home from hospitals so that staff know what care is being provided and whether staff at the home are responsible for providing that care, and to submit results of an internal audit related to the issues.

Retirement residents sometimes require extra care after being hospitalized. That care can sometimes be provided by publicly funded nurses.

Meanwhile, some residents continue to fight fee increases at Alavida Lifestyles retirement homes in the city. That includes a 97-year-old resident of the company’s retirement home in Ottawa called the Ravines. Magdalena Rogall’s monthly bill for her studio residence in the building will go up by $2,500 according to her family.

Stephen Blais, the Liberal MPP for Orléans, has met with residents at Le Promenades who are shocked by the fee increases.

“Some of the dollar figure increases were enormous, to the point that many residents were concerned about their capacity to pay,” Blais said.

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Company officials have told residents that it is phasing out so-called “marketing discounts”. Residents say they were unaware those were temporary or could be taken away.

Blais said the company told residents in Orléans that if the discounts did not go away, it would put the financial health of the home at risk. “They were using fear with older people who are vulnerable, almost as a motivating factor to try to extract more money. That is how it appeared,” Blais said.

He, like NDP MPP Chandra Pasma, who has met with Alavida residents in her riding, Ottawa West-Nepean, is calling for more regulations to protect retirement home residents from such steep fee spikes.

Manny DeFilippo, Ashcroft’s chief financial officer, said the company cannot afford to keep the marketing discounts in place.

“As there are financial pressures across our different parts of the business, the ability to continue to support the marketing discounts that were always intended to be of a temporary nature can simply no longer be supported. It is for those reasons that we have taken the measures by working with all residents to find a reasonable way to work through the elimination of these discounts.”

Officials from Alavida did not responded to a request for comment about the compliance order.

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