With the appointment of Ken White as supervisor to William Osler Health Centre, the agency now has the power to look into patient grievances.

The Ombudsman's office does not generally have power over hospitals in Ontario, but White's appointment has changed that, said agency spokesperson Linda Williamson.

"That changes when the government takes direct control since the Ombudsman has jurisdiction over the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care," she said.

The move comes after two patient deaths at the hospital, and after a 72-year-old woman claimed doctors operated on the wrong leg when she went to Brampton Civic for surgery on Christmas Day. Williamson said the provincial agency does not intend to investigate the events that have transpired at the new hospital recently. Rather, the Ombudsman's office will look into situations that occur at Brampton Civic moving forward.

"This is the very beginning of a process. We are not now saying 'Oh we heard about something that happened a couple of months ago and we'll go and investigate,'" Williamson said. Someone will have to come forward with a complaint. We get 20,000 complaints a year on everything in the government and so we will assess them the way we do all our complaints. And if there is something with substance of course we will investigate it and see what happens from there."

Ontario is the only province in Canada where the Ombudsman does not have a mandate to oversee hospitals. Despite this, the office receives numerous complaints about hospitals every year that cannot be investigated.

A total of 228 complaints about hospitals were received in 2007, the office of the Ombudsman has reported.

"Normally, if someone were to call us about the hospital we wouldn't be able to do anything," Williamson told The Guardian. "Right now there is this window of jurisdiction that has opened."

If a problem with the government has been identified, the Ombudsman can report on it and make recommendations to correct the situation.

The agency can also make recommendations to change government policies and practices to prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.