Alberta Health Services has responded to a report released by the Wildrose party on Tuesday, detailing some serious concerns with the level of care in the long term care unit at the Lacombe Hospital and Care Centre.

AHS did confirm that there was an investigation launched last month regarding the concerns, and they also confirmed that those concerns are mostly accurate, clarifying the issues are based entirely in the long term care unit, and not the Lacombe Hospital as a whole.

So far three staff members have been placed on leave according to AHS Vice President and Chief Health Operations Officer for Central and Southern Alberta Brenda Huband.

"Those staff members may have had some role in some of the concerns, so what we wanted to do was to be able to both protect them and ensure we were able to have a robust investigation, and once we have all of the results of that we will be meeting with those three staff members".

First and Foremost, Huband says their concerns and actions centered on the residents living in the facility.

"We have done health assessments on all 75 residents to ensure there are no outstanding health concerns.  Those assessments would have also included physiotherapy and a falls risk assessment just to make sure that everyone is safe and able to be up on their own or do they need a walker or some other kind of device to help them, so it's just again a part of an assessment".

A thorough cleaning was also done at the site with support from infection prevention control professionals.

Measures continue at the site to educate staff, and also address any concerns the patients and their families may have according to Huband.

"The first things that we did were to make sure we had leadership at the site, because there has been some vacancies there, so we ensured there was leaders there. We had investigation teams that were in very very soon after the concerns were addressed to us, and we are now moving on to education with our teams, and really creating a foundation of how to move forward more into resident and family focused care."

The concerns, which included lack of proper training in a number of areas, and pointing to uncleanliness, and medication being left unsecured, unlabelled and unattended, were originally brought to AHS's attention by nurse practicum students from Red Deer College, who were completing practicums at Lacombe Hospital in the long term care unit.

There is still a lot of positive support for Lacombe Hospital and Care Centre, but Huband says these concerns are troubling, and they have to be raised and addressed in order to move forward.

"This is a site that has had some challenges, but they do many many things very well. What we want to do is create a foundation to go forward on where that excellent care continues. But there have been concerns raised which we have to address. And that's part of the whole goal, is to keep moving forward, but make sure we have a strong underpinning so all of that strong care can continue."

You can view the concerns addressed by the Wildrose Party here.

Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ron Orr presented the findings and questioned Health Minister Sarah Hoffman in the legislature on Tuesday, watch here.