A Toronto Star story last month provides some useful information on for-profit retirement homes. These homes now take care of patients that, until recent years, were taken care of in hospitals. With hospital cutbacks, more hospital patients will be forced into them. Here is part of what the Star reported : • The Ontario coroner's office is investigating the suspicious deaths of three elderly residents of a controversial west Toronto retirement home. • The coroner's probe comes after a Star investigation detailed allegations that residents Edith Farrell, 80, and Danny Henderson, 74, died in hospital earlier this year after suffering severe malnutrition at In Touch Retirement Living. After the story ran, the family of a third resident, 83-year-old Nellie Dineno, came forward with allegations that she, too, had serious health problems that went untreated before her death in late July. • Critics say the government will allow the privately operated retirement homes to accep
Notes from Leftwords -- Doug Allan