Canada's Crumbling Medicare System

[Grig]

http://ottawasun.com/News/National/2007 ... 93603.html

January 17, 2007
ER wait ends in miscarriage
By CP

MONTREAL -- A pregnant woman says she had to wait more than 15 hours in an emergency room before being treated and had a miscarriage in the hospital's bathroom.

Marie-Sabine Thalerand was two months pregnant and said she went to the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital on Jan. 8 with her husband because she was bleeding. "I went to reception but they told me to wait my turn," she said.

The hospital said it's investigating and noted its emergency services were stretched beyond the normal limit that day.

[EdS]

Like I've said before, the Quebec waiting-room situation is worse than that of any third-world rural infirmary.

[styky]

With all the annoucements that have been made in the past five years with regard to new funding for hospitals it leaves you wondering just why has their been no improvements in care during that time. I give for example, <a href=http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/162/4/559>Latest ER crisis hit communities large and small </a> writen in 2000

It is obvious that who ever is handling fund designation doesn't know their hinnie from their elbow. In the really world these people would be given their walking papers and escorted from the building. But not if they are part of the Health care industry or the civil service. No then they are given more money and told to spend it in fact we'll even give them performance bonuses for their failed effort.

The problem is that when they screw up people die. How much longer are Canadians willing to answer these deaths with "Oh well, what can you do"

[Zip.com]

http://ottawasun.com/News/National/2007/01/17/pf-3393603.html

January 17, 2007
ER wait ends in miscarriage
By CP

MONTREAL -- A pregnant woman says she had to wait more than 15 hours in an emergency room before being treated and had a miscarriage in the hospital's bathroom.

Marie-Sabine Thalerand was two months pregnant and said she went to the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital on Jan. 8 with her husband because she was bleeding. "I went to reception but they told me to wait my turn," she said.

The hospital said it's investigating and noted its emergency services were stretched beyond the normal limit that day.

That was an emergent situation. She can sue the hospital. If she had been PROPERLY triaged that would never have happened.

[Princess_Jules]

This has happened in Alberta twice in the past few months. Perhaps even more. Two were widely publicized. As far as I know nothing has been done to correct it; other than a lot of talk.

[styky]

http://ottawasun.com/News/National/2007/01/17/pf-3393603.html

January 17, 2007
ER wait ends in miscarriage
By CP

MONTREAL -- A pregnant woman says she had to wait more than 15 hours in an emergency room before being treated and had a miscarriage in the hospital's bathroom.

Marie-Sabine Thalerand was two months pregnant and said she went to the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital on Jan. 8 with her husband because she was bleeding. "I went to reception but they told me to wait my turn," she said.

The hospital said it's investigating and noted its emergency services were stretched beyond the normal limit that day.

That was an emergent situation. She can sue the hospital. If she had been PROPERLY triaged that would never have happened.

If you think in our system you can sue a hospital you're living in a dream world. I had a family member dropped after surgery breaking ribs puncturing a lung and sustaining a head injury that will affect him the rest of his life. I was told by several legal council that to even have them start it would cost me $10,000 up front and by the end even if I won it would not cover the costs I would have to lay out. I was advised that in Canada if a hospital hurts you it's no skin off their nose and theres not much recourse for you other than besmirching their image in the media.

[The Gooch]

How much of this is a problem with those in the reception area? The emergency is full of people that shouldn't be there and it is up to those in reception to identify those with REAL HEALTH ISSUES and bump them to the front of the line.

[Kate Shaw]

I hope someone sends a copy of this to Sen. Clinton to put in her HilaryCare File. I'm going to send it to my sisters who think socialist medicine is a wonderful idea.

[EdS]

Triage? What's triage? We don' do no triage! We don' gotta do no steenkin' triage!

What do you theenk thees iss, a hosipal? Eeef you wan' hosipal, go to America!

[Zip.com]

How much of this is a problem with those in the reception area? The emergency is full of people that shouldn't be there and it is up to those in reception to identify those with REAL HEALTH ISSUES and bump them to the front of the line.

It's up the the R.N.'s, who are supposed to be properly trained to triage.

[Roy Wilson]

Triage? What's triage? We don' do no triage! We don' gotta do no steenkin' triage!

What do you theenk thees iss, a hosipal? Eeef you wan' hosipal, go to America!

Yes you are right.
Went to the US a couple of years back for an MRI , wait here was 6-8 months, got it in NY state next day.

[The Gooch]

How much of this is a problem with those in the reception area? The emergency is full of people that shouldn't be there and it is up to those in reception to identify those with REAL HEALTH ISSUES and bump them to the front of the line.

It's up the the R.N.'s, who are supposed to be properly trained to triage.

That makes it worse considering the nurses always seem to be on strike in Quebec.

[styky]

Year after year we get story after story and there is immediate outrage and then not until we need help ourselves or for our family members do we even think about it.

<a href=http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/specials/story.html?id=f3c505e3-3b82-4b0b-a3b8-7513a3bc250c>This story </a>is from 2005, What's changed just the names


Just remember according to the media......it's global warming that is at the top of our list.

[T.G.]

Here's a three-part article I've been working on re: the crisis in the Canadian medical system. Apologies for the length of this, but there's lots of grist for the mill, as they say ...

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PART ONE

Every year, it takes up a huge chunk of federal and provincial budgets, is thought to kill 24,000 born people – and another 100,000 or so pre-born persons - and is rife with fraud to the tune of up to $10 billion. What is it?
Why, the Canadian medical system, of course. At a time when health care ranks as the top, or almost the top, priority for the Canadian electorate, surprisingly little attention is paid to the myriad of serious problems plaguing the system, apart from what is often ballyhooed as chronic funding shortages.
Readers should note that this article is by no means is meant to denigrate the professionalism, dedication and integrity of individuals working heroically within the Canadian medical system to save lives and maintain individuals’ good health. Instead, it is intended to serve more as an indictment of the leaderships within the Canadian medical system – those individuals and entities that are often seen shilling for the abortion and contraceptive industries and the like. Those leaders have also thrown out the classic Hippocratic Oath and pay lip service to ethics within both training and practical regimens.
In beginning our look at the Canadian medical system, it is worthwhile to examine some overall numbers. As alluded to at the outset, Canada’s health care system gobbles up what can only be described as astronomical sums of money for perhaps-questionable returns. It is known that, according to a the Canadian Institute for Health Information report, health care spending in Canada saw an increase of nearly $100 billion within a 20-year span, from $37 billion in 1984 to $130 billion in 2004. Ontario alone now spends a remarkable 40 per cent ($32.9 billion) of its entire provincial government budget on health care and yet, the province’s hospitals continue to report deficits of half a billion dollars a year.
What are citizens getting for all this money? In what was described by a health services researcher as an “explosive” result, the Canadian Adverse Event Study, the first of its kind in this country, found an astonishing 24,000 hospital Canadians died in the year 2000 at the hands of medical personnel from errors that could have been prevented. In all, some 185,000 fatal and non-fatal mistakes occurred – 7.5 per 100 hospital patients. Nearly a quarter of Canadians – 5.2 million –said they or a family member experienced medical errors or preventable adverse effects while being treated in a hospital.
Another study found that for every “adverse event” that is detected, 20 to 25 others are not. The problem is known to be serious enough that a special task force on patient safety is recommending yet more money – this time, $10 million – be poured into creating a national institute that will identify, track and find ways to reduce medical errors.
Dr. John Wade, chair of a national steering committee on patient safety, wants to change what he described as an environment of fear and blame within the health care profession, in which workers feel uncomfortable about speaking out about errors out of fear of lawsuits or disciplinary action. Others are citing a “culture of silence” within hospitals. It has been reported that hospitals are encouraging the voluntary reporting of mistakes – leading one to ask what they have been doing otherwise: covering them up?
It’s not as if the health system’s customer’s aren’t noticing what’s going on. According to the Canadian Medical Association’s 2004 national report card, 41 per cent of Canadians gave health care poor grades, with 11 per cent flunking it altogether. CMA president Dr. Sunil Patel said at the time that the figures prove Canadians’ “confidence in the health care system is eroding.”
The situation is even drawing attention internationally, as the Reuters news service characterized Canada’s health system as “creaking alarmingly, with long wait lists for treatment and shortages of cash and doctors.” Average wait times for treatment in this country hover around 17-18 weeks. The Fraser Institute cynically describes our medical system as one “offering low expectations cloaked in lofty rhetoric.” An unnamed doctor was quoted as saying, “There is a lot of inhumanity built into the system.”
Fifteen per cent of Canadians didn’t have a family doctor as of 2003 and a recent report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information noted millions of Canadians are going without needed health care. This is principally because, despite the huge sums expended on the socialized system, many facets of health care are paid for out-of-pocket – prescription drugs, dental work, vision care, home care, psychiatric services, addictions treatment and accommodations in nursing homes and institutions.
Sun Media’s Greg Weston, writing in September 2004, observed that “free” health care in Canada costs the average Canadian family a staggering $5,500 a year, whether they use it or not. He described the system as “dysfunctional” and charged that, while politicians claim user fees would be the death of medicare “and the demise of Canada as we know it,” individuals are already coughing up $18 billion a year for health services straight out of their pockets.
He asserted that the system cannot sustain, let alone better, the level of health services to Canadians and their families. He also expressed concern over what lies ahead. “Spending on health care will grow at up to 9 per cent a year. As a matter of perspective, in 18 months, those spiralling costs alone would eat through all of the $12 billion in increased funding the feds are now offering the provinces over five years. As for the future for the Canadian taxpayer, it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out the impact of adding even a 5 per cent a year increase to the existing family burden of $5,500. The medicare message is clear – fix it or go broke.”
The last thing those struggling families might want to hear is that health care workers are overpaid and that fraud and inflated claims are rampant. Sadly, that seems to be the case. A Fraser Institute study released in September 2004 found Ontario hospitals are paying their workers too much money and that rising payrolls ate up all the additional tax dollars given to hospitals by the provincial government between 1997 and 2002.
The number of hospital workers making over $100,000 tripled since 1996 and the average pay for those making the most money increased a whopping 60 per cent. Yet, a spokesperson for the Ontario Hospital Association suggested Ontario hospitals “are among the country’s most efficient and continue to improve upon that.”
Efficient or not, citizens may not have been reassured after the Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association found in a survey released this past September that health care fraud costs this country $3 billion to $10 billion a year. “It’s a big problem,” said Michael Chettleburgh of Fraudbox Inc, which conducted the survey, by way of understatement. “Would that affect you as a health consumer? I would suggest it does.”
Some estimates pegged the rate of fraudulent claims at six to 19 per cent. The most common forms are billing for services never provided, unnecessary care, mis-representing non-covered procedures as necessary and billing for services provided to a fictitious patient. Most of those surveyed called for more serious penalties for health care fraud.
Despite all the fraud, death, overspending poor service, the problems don’t end there:
- While referring to a recent book on the Nancy Oliveiri affair, a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton suggested whistleblowers in the medical system “face great risks.” Dr. Gordon Guyatt says the pharmaceutical industry is facing criticisms for extravagant gift-giving to potential prescribers of its drugs, large payments to experts in positions to make influential recommendations, withholding data from researchers, ghost writing of manuscripts and withholding information on the deleterious effects of its drugs. As well, on the university medical research front, there is a premium on employees serving institutional interests, an increasing intolerance of dissent and criticism and an erosion of academic freedom.
- The sorry state of Canadian health care is fuelling a boom in private care and speedy service in the U.S. In just the past year, such business has as much as tripled.
- Superbug infections are spiralling in Canadian hospitals, killing as many as 8,000 people a year and costing the health system $100 million. Statistics show 250,000 Canadians get sick from preventable infections every year. A CBC News investigation last spring found that restaurants have more germ-fighting regulations to contend with than hospitals do.
- The Canadian Taxpayers Federation projects that at present rates, Ontario will spend an incredible 85 per cent of its entire provincial budget on health care alone. This will be even though the average Canadian family forks over 48 per cent of its income in taxes.
- Doctors who are rude, throw tantrums, or bully patients and co-workers are common enough that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is drafting a program to deal with them. The president of the Ontario Nurses Association said, “This is not fiction. It’s a serious problem that has to be dealt with.”
- The Canadian Medical Association Journal raised questions about whether governing bodies adequately police potential conflicts on interest in the referral practices of doctors. Two commentaries raised the possibility of doctors receiving kickbacks from diagnostic or supplementary health clinics for referring patients to them or ordering unnecessary tests to be performed in laboratories in which the doctors have a financial interest.
- An Agence France Press article exposed “the secret world of doctors’ slang,” in which patients are labelled with acronyms such as ATFO (“asked to f--- off”) and PAFO (“p----- and fell over”). Another acronym label is DBI, for “dirt-bag index (referring to a patient’s hygiene). Patients near death are described as “circling the drain,” “good for parts only.” The “Q sign” refers to a patient with his tongue hanging out of his mouth in a terminal condition. A British medical official who chronicled the terms agreed they were offensive, but serve to “depersonalize the distress encountered in doctors’ everyday working lives … Often, someone else’s pain is too much for us, so we cut off.”

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PART TWO

In all fairness, it must be pointed out that at least one commentary exists contradicting the assertion that 24,000 people die every year from medical errors in Canada. “Improving Patient Safety: Moving Beyond the Hype of Medical Errors,” written by Alan J. Forster, Kaveh G. Shojania and Carl van Walraven, was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Oct. 11, 2005. It suggested that the identification of medical errors is “a subjective process” that leads to “wide variations in the reported prevalence of adverse events.”
The commentary also noted that most errors only cause temporary symptoms and that there is no assessment of the degree to which an error contributes to a patient’s eventual death. Only six per cent of patients who were victimized by a medical error would have been expected to live an additional three months had the errors not occurred, it said.
Regardless of this, however, a survey of anecdotal events shows that in absolute terms, there are still massive problems with our medical system. Where we looked at the situation in general in November, let us now look at some specifics up to April 2004.
- In November 1999, a class action lawsuit was authorized against Montreal’s St. Charles Borromee Hospital for allegedly failing to provide even the most basic services for its severely disabled long-term patients. This included neglecting to wash and feed them properly between 1993 and 1997.
- In July 2002, Alfred Potter, a mentally ill man, died in the emergency room of Hamilton’s St. Joseph’s Hospital after a series of errors by emergency department nurses and a family doctor.
- In October 2002, 11-year-old Claire Lewis died in a Hamilton hospital from what were openly described as “a string of errors and bad decisions” in her care. Her father, a nurse within the Hamilton healthcare system, had to spend months fighting the hospital to accept its responsibility in the death, before it coughed up an unprecedented letter of apology.
- In September 2003, a $4.6 million lawsuit was filed against Hamilton fertility doctor Salim Daya for unethically conducting an unofficial clinical trial on a patient, which included a sham operation.
- In October 2003, doctors were reported to be continuing to prescribe the anti-depressants Paxil and Effexor to teenagers despite warnings of dangerous side effects, including increased risks of suicidal thoughts.
- Also in October 2003, a joint conference of the Canadian Bioethics Society and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities heard that hospitals in the Western world allow interns and residents to practise resuscitation techniques on newly deceased patients without consent.
- The same month, the boss of a probe into the Canadian SARS outbreak said a massive overhaul of the public health system was needed to address weaknesses including a lack of basic public health tools.
- In November 2003, Zambian-born Regina Dr. John Schneeberger, who was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting two of his patients, was released from prison to calls for deportation from a federal MP.
- Also in November 2003, an advisory was issued after Captain William Jackman Hospital in Labrador City may have used unsterile instruments in its gynecology clinic over a one-and-a-half-year period.
- The same month, the Kansas City Star newspaper unearthed documents that revealed Red Cross officials in Canada and the U.S. in the early 1980s were more concerned with legal requirements than with halting the spread of Hepatitis C in blood supplies. It wasn’t until 1990 that testing for the disease was begun in Canada.
- The same month, Whitby, Ont. obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Errol Wai-Ping appeared before a disciplinary committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario on charges that included botched hysterectomies, deliveries and gynecological procedures, life-threatening infections after surgery, unnecessary hysterectomies and failure to diagnose cancer.
- In January 2004, the Quebec College of Physicians launched an investigation into the case of Montreal pediatric surgeon Maria Di Lorenzo, who was infected with the AIDS virus, but continued operating on children for 13 years without medical administrators being aware of her condition.
- The same month, the Ontario Ministry of Health admitted that medical instruments manufactured for single use – including forceps, scissors and speculums – were being reused by Ontario hospitals. By then, nine hospitals were forced to alert former patients that they might have been exposed to instruments that weren’t properly sterilized.
- In February 2004, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal of paramedics Sebastien Valade and Martin Gariepy, who refused to treat a dying man because they were on a break when they were called on to help.
- In March 2004, federal Auditor-General Sheila Fraser said Health Canada’s medical device protocols so lacked credibility, they are routinely ignored by hospital and lab workers. That put Canadians using pregnancy tests, pacemakers, MRIs and some forms of birth control at risk.
- In April 2004, Hamilton surgeon Dr. Daniel Bowser, whose patient died because he failed to properly communicate instructions for the man’s care, was ordered to pay almost $1.3 million as a result of a lawsuit.
- The same month, about 175 hip surgery patients over a six-year period were recalled by Montreal General Hospital because a surgical instrument used in operations performed on them may not have been properly sterilized.

-----

PART THREE

- In March 2003, Ontario’s chief medical officer was accused by an expert on infectious diseases of concealing the extent of the 2002 West Nile virus outbreak. The expert said he had “begged” Dr. Colin D’Cunha to notify the public about outbreaks of the disease, which killed at least 11 people.
- In May 2003, the father of a 17-month old boy who died in 2001 told a coroner’s inquest that paramedics ignored his and his wife’s pleas to transport their feverish child to hospital. This was after four earlier trips to the hospital in which doctors didn’t help the boy’s fever, vomiting and crying. Writing later on the matter, Toronto Sun columnist Michelle Mandel called the Canadian healthcare system “a shameful, tragic mess.”
- In August 2003, a coroner’s investigation revealed that paramedics in Burlington, Ont. mistakenly administered morphine, instead of adrenaline, to a dying seven-year-old boy. In the boy’s particular case, the morphine slowed breathing and caused a drop in blood pressure, as well as unconsciousness. This could have led to his death.
- In September 2003, a television documentary entitled Bloody Disgrace contradicted the federal government’s claims that nothing could have been done prior to 1986 to curb the spread of Hepatitis C through tainted blood. In fact, U.S. blood experts – with whom Canadian experts worked closely - as early as 1981 were recommending donated blood undergo tests to indicate the likely presence of the virus.
- In May 2004, a third First Nations family was actually mailed the remains of their miscarried baby. Provincial Health Minister George Smitherman said he was “angered and deeply concerned” at the way “human tissue” was being handled.
- Also that month, a former male nurse at Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital was arrested on child pornography charges. Scott Faichnie also had photos of patients in his possession.
- Again in May 2004, Saskatchewan’s College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed a physician to review the deaths of 88 people who had been treated at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital. The 88 had not been seen within times set by national guidelines and died within 48 hours.
- Also the same month, a Winnipeg man said he was told to lie on a waiting room floor while experiencing heart palpitations at his city’s Grace General Hospital. Stephen Fielding said he was told he would have to lie on the floor because no stretchers were available.
- Also the same month, a Winnipeg woman said she endured a two-and-a-half-year nightmare as she tried to learn how and why her 86-year-oldmother died in a city hospital. Apparently, Manitoba’s privacy laws prevented her from finding out what went wrong in her mother’s treatment.
- Also the same month, Calgary dental surgeon Dr. Douglas Vincelli agreed to pay $3 million to a patient immobilized by chronic pain after he treated her about a decade earlier.
- And also the same month, a Toronto Star article reported that many Ontario nursing home residents die each year from abuse and neglect – including broken bones, oozing bedsores, medical errors, over-medication and untreated constipation. The provincial coroner had not held even one inquest scrutinizing the inadequate care that ultimately kills some elderly.
- In June 2004, a 69-year-old Red Deer, Alta. man died after receiving the wrong painkilling medication. Three months earlier, two Calgary patients died after being given the wrong medications during dialysis treatments.
- Also in June 2004, Windsor, Ont. residents were complaining that their doctors were cherrypicking patients by shutting out those with chronic illnesses and denying basic care. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario said there are no guidelines, moral obligations or laws against physicians selectively choosing whom they will treat.
- The same month, a Montreal doctor said “dirty hospitals” were to blame for a huge increase in a potentially deadly type of diarrhea that killed as many as 79 people over a period of a year and a half.
- The same month, disgusted relatives pulled stroke victim Christina Jackson out of Victoria, B.C.’s Royal Jubilee Hospital after she was placed in a storage closet. Hospital officials characterized the move as “a creative solution to an ongoing bed shortage.”
- In July 2004, the first study of its kind in Canada found that five per cent of 2,000 chest-pain patients rushed to two Vancouver hospitals were discharged inappropriately by doctors who had misdiagnosed them. Heart attacks and unstable angina were commonly missed by the physicians.
- Also in July 2004, three Health Canada scientists were fired for daring to criticize their department’s drug approval policies. The three said they were often pressured to approve unsafe veterinary drugs.
- The same month, a Windsor, Ont. couple was left in shock after their two-year-old son died at home following what was described as “simple day surgery” to remove his tonsils and adenoids.
- The same month, it was discovered that London, Ont. doctor Tenzin Rabgey, who committed suicide, had hundreds of thousands of child porn images on his computers.
- In August 2004, a B.C. woman died in a White Rock hospital after what the family alleged was hospital bureaucracy. The woman’s uncle, who had rushed her to the hospital, was told, “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to call an ambulance … that’s our policy, sir.”
- Also in August 2004, an Emergency Care Task Force in Winnipeg identified the need to “look at all our processes … look at the whole system” after a string of high-profile tragedies in the city’s hospitals. They included the death of a woman who perished from a heart attack after waiting in the emergency room for six hours.
- The same month, the Canadian practice of reusing single-use medical devices was being described as “still common” and “routine.” A medical device manufacturers association described the results of such practices as “disastrous” and said patients were being exposed to needless risks on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said Canadian hospitals were in the “dark ages” when it came to containing sometimes-fatal bacteria in their midst.
- In September 2004, two B.C. parents accused the medical system of failing them after their six-year-old daughter died because of a diagnosis of a bacterial infection that came too late.
- In October 2004, the Peter Lougheed Centre hospital in Calgary discarded a woman’s miscarried baby into a trash compactor. The baby’s remains had been left sitting in a plastic bag on an emergency room counter before the disposal.
- The same month, it was reported that young children in Saskatchewan can literally have to wait years for surgery within their home province.
- In November 2004, a mixup at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre left a premature baby’s body at the hospital for two weeks as the baby’s family buried only the placenta and fetal membranes, thinking they were the baby’s body.
- The same month, a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine reported that Canadian heart attack victims are dying because crowded emergency rooms are leading to life-threatening delays in the administration of clot-clearing drugs.
- In December 2004, police investigated the disappearance of a 17-week-old stillborn baby from St. Catharines General Hospital in Ontario. The hospital said after a search it had “somehow” lost the 1.7-ounce, 15-centimetre baby.
- In January 2005, a study reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that dozens of children leave hospital emergency departments every day without being seen by a doctor because of overcrowding and lengthy waits for care.
- Also in January 2005, Hamilton grandmother Joanne Blais laid for two-and-a-half days on an uncomfortable stretcher in Henderson General Hospital’s emergency department, sometimes in her own vomit, before being diagnosed with a brain tumour. According to news reports, her story didn’t shock the chief of emergency medicine at Hamilton Health Sciences, who said patients are commonly lined in hallways.
- In May 2005, four doctors were found guilty of negligence in the death of a Stoney Creek, Ont. woman and were held liable for an award of $186,000. A Superior Court judge said the actions of the four “fell below the standard of skill and care that is reasonably expected of a normal, prudent medical practitioner.”
- The Canadian Blood Services agency and Hamilton hospitals in June 2005 refused to discuss a case of tampering that had occurred with records kept on blood given at Hamilton blood donor clinics. The tampering had sparked a massive recall of blood products by the agency two months earlier.
- The same month, staff at Kelowna General Hospital in B.C. refused to treat an unconscious man who had been brought to their site and instead told his transporter to call 911 and wait for an ambulance. Three years earlier, a woman who collapsed just metres from the hospital’s emergency room doors had also been told to wait for an ambulance.
- Also in June 2005, the Canadian Union of Public Employees charged hospitals “are becoming an increasingly unsafe environment” because of “bugs that are growing more virulent.” In April 2005, 19 people in Port Colborne, Ont. and Welland, Ont. hospitals tested positive for bacteria resistant to antibiotics, while a Kingston hospital in June 2005 reported 30 such cases – some with active infections. A strain of C. difficile bacteria infected 7,000 people, killing 600 of them, in Quebec in the months following April 2003.
- Again in June 2005, Newfoundland doctor Sean Buckingham was hit with eight more criminal charges, including one of uttering threats, for a total of 30 charges in a “sex-for-pills” operation. A second physician, Boyd Goodyear, faced a charge of sexual assault.
- The same month, Ontario’s chief coroner ordered a review of Toronto pathologist Dr. Charles Smith, who was accused of mishandling 40 autopsies involving the suspicious deaths of children.
- In facing a charge of conduct unbecoming a doctor, laid by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Windsor, Ont.-area physician Nicholas Rathe admitted in August 2005 that he verbally abused his patients, calling them names and swearing at them.
- In September 2005, two nurses pleaded guilty to professional misconduct in the death of a 10-year-old girl at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The two admitted they did not adequately monitor the girl, nor did they correctly document her care or condition. A coroner’s inquest had earlier ruled the death a homicide.
- In May of this year, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein predicted that the rear end of his successor “will pucker” when he sees the amount that is being spent on health care and by how much that figure is escalating every year. It is expected that healthcare will gobble up 60 per cent of the provincial budget by 2025.
- A June 2006 Hamilton Spectator article asked the question: “How can hospitals stop killing people?” It noted 9,000-24,000 patients are killed by errors every year in Canada, with hundreds alone in the Hamilton Health Sciences system.
- Health Canada announced in July of this year that X-ray induced cancers are killing up to 2,500 Canadians a year, while procedures that use X-rays to guide thin tubes and other devices into blood vessels and arteries have not been tested for radiation safety. Researchers also report that chest X-rays may double or triple the risk of breast cancer in women genetically predisposed to the disease.

[styky]

T.G. thanks for the wonderful work you have put together. I am printing it off so I can read it at my leasure and make some notes. I'll comment later.