By Doug Draper
“NHS = DOA.”
Those acronyms – NHS for Niagara Health System and DOA for ‘dead on arrival’ – were coupled together on a sign a man dressed up in a Grim Reaper costume was carrying last year during a protest rally in front of the one and only hospital serving the border community of Fort Erie. 
Hundreds of residents from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, who work and own homes in Fort Erie, joined the rally last September in protest of the NHS’s decision to close Douglas Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. Many expressed fear that lives would be lost ambulancing patients in critical condition further away, to already crowded emergency rooms in Niagara Falls or Welland. And many now wonder if their worst fear has come true in the wake of a tragic traffic accident that occurred on Boxing Day, along a stretch of Hwy. 3 running through Fort Erie.
One of the victims of the accident – Fort Erie teenager Reilly Anzovino – was ambulanced to the Welland County Hospital where, according to a police report, she was pronounced dead on arrival.
The death of the 18-year-old college student has re-ignited fear and anger over the NHS – the administrative body the Ontario government has in charge of operating several hospital sites across the Niagara region – and its decision to move forward last September with downgrading the Fort Erie hospitals’s ER to an “urgent care centre” despite thousands of signatures of protest sent to the province.
It has also ignited calls for a coroner’s inquest and full public inquiry into the circumstances surround the death and what role ambulancing Anzovino to a hospital further away may have played in it.
For its part, the NHS has argued that converting the ER to an urgent care centre or UCC (if you can stand yet another acronym) is nothing to worry about. The UCC continues to offer care to 95 per cent of the patients would routinely go to an ER. It is just the most critical cases, including those facing immediate, life-threatening conditions, that would be raced off to ERs in other parts of the region.
Reilly Anzovino evidently fell into that more critical category since she was ambulanced from the Fort Erie accident site to the Welland hospital which involved about twice the travel time as a trip to either the Fort Erie or Port Colborne hospitals and, as it turned out, she didn’t quite make it.
Some may ask, then why wasn’t she rushed to the Port Colborne hospital? Well that’s because the NHS, in its wisdom, employed the same kind of ‘don’t worry’ logic to that hospital last June when, much to the chagrin of thousands of residents in that community, it converted its ER to a UCC.
It’s become a pattern with the NHS and other hospital systems across Ontario to consolidate more and more services – emergency, maternity, etc. – at larger hospital sites and let hospital sites in relatively smaller populated communities slowly but surely rot on the vine.
Port Colborne residents fear their hospital is suffering the same fate and within three months of that hospital’s ER being converted to a UCC this past summer, a Port Colborne resident named Don Davis, who lived less than five minutes from the hospital site suffered a heart attack. He too was ambulanced off to the Welland hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
That incident left Port Colborne’s mayor Vance Badawey calling on the province for a full investigation around the circumstances that, for all anyone knows, could have turned out differently if there had been medical staff available at the local hospital to stabilize the patient. Now the same questions and concerns, along with demands for a provincial investigation, are swirling around the death of Reilly Anzovino.
As an example, just one of the many Facebook entries on her death reads; “This is sickening. She could still be alive if the government wasn’t so cheap. I say we organize a protest or petition or something in her honour so nobody else loses a friend, daughter, son, neighbour, classmate. …”
These lines reflect those that many Fort Erie and Port Colborne residents have expressed, that their hospitals are being downsized by the province and its NHS and Local Health Integration Network or LHIN surrogates for purposes that have less to do with quality health care and more to do with slashing just about everything but their own salaries.
Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and head of the Yellow Shirt Brigade fighting to save services at that town’s hospital, says her group urged Ontario’s McGuinty government to place a moratorium on closing the ER until a provincial review is completed on the future of smaller hospitals “but the province and NHS just went on their merry way. They kept telling us that change is an emotional issue while we were trying to tell them it is a life-and-death issue.”
In the wake of the tragedy circumstances around death of Reilly Anzovino, the call for an inquest into these deaths, and a broader investigation into the NHS and how effectively it is operating a hospital system now seriously in debt, has intensified.
Those calling for an investigation into the latest case involving Reilly Anzovino include Kim Craitor, a Liberal MPP for Niagara Falls and the Fort Erie area, and member of the province’s government, and Peter Kormos, a Welland area MPP and opposition member for the New Democratic Party in the province.
Kormos said no one can be certain if the young girl would have survived if she’d been taken to a hospital site that was closer. That is why an inquest should be conducted, he said. “We are talking about public interest here.”
The population in the Fort Erie and Port Colborne areas swells significantly during the spring and summer months, Kormos added, when Americans and others who own homes and cottages in those communities flock in and greater numbers of people make for the probability of a greater number of health emergencies, including traffic, boating, swimming and other accidents. And how will a hospital system that has closed down emergency rooms in both Fort Erie and Port Colborne handle that?
How will it indeed? Which raises the question so many people in these communites have been asking. Will the province finally look seriously at the health needs of a part of the region that is growing and is expected to possibly outgrow the north end of the region in the decades ahead?
Or will the province continue to bow to an NHS that is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new hospital at a west St. Catharines site in north Niagara where it plans to consolidate more health care services while systematically cutting services at hospitals serving residents in the centre and south?
Niagara At Large 
We welcome the voice of Doug in his continuing concern for adequate Health Care Services for Residents of the Southern Tier.
When the NHS closed our Operating Rooms we warned them it would cause cancellations and delays of Surgery.
When the NHS closed our Medical beds we warned them of bed shortages.
When the NHS closed our Emergency Rooms we warned them of the potential loss of life.
There is no satisfaction in being right.. only very heavy hearts in our community, that in a Season for Joy a family mourns the loss of their 18 year old daughter.
The NHS should be held accountable for implimenting a Hospital “Improvement “Plan that the LHIN says will not save significant Health dollars.
How many more Inquests will have to be demanded before they will admit the error of their ways.
LikeLike
Thank you Doug for another great article. We rely on people like you to get the truth and the facts out in the open, and welcome your column and the many issues that you write about.
Our Yellow Shirt Brigade has been actively working in the background, trying to keep the community informed about the drastic changes to our health system in the Niagara Region. The core group meets often and we decided as a group that we have to do something now before our health care system is beyond repair. We decided on an open forum where the concerned residents can come forward with their stories that happened to them. Not what they heard via the grapevine, but what they witnessed themselves. The good and the bad!
There is so much going on that the general public is not aware of, primarily because they have had the good fortune of good health and not in an emergency medical situation, or one that needs to be followed up in one of our three hospitals allotted to us.
There are so many stories out there, and we want to bring them out into the open by the general public, immediately connected to these stories. So many people don’t want to be involved because it is private to them, or they fear if they speak out, they will not be treated properly when they need help.
There are many people who see no problems with the changes made, as they went to the U.C.C. and received good care and these stories show that the medical staff is doing a great job. We all agree with this and want to hear the good things as well as the negatives from both the medical staff and the patients.
The drastic changes the NHS have made throughout the Niagara Region has put all of the thousands of citizens to a great risk, and as said above, the general public is not aware of it. Many of these instances of mismanagement will be brought forward and the more people that can attend our moderated forum, the more we can do to bring forth our concerns to our Government and the Citizens of Canada.
Why do we have to drive miles, sit in waiting rooms for hours before being seen by doctors and nurses who do not know us, and who are overworked? Years ago we had community hospitals and more local services available. Patients were treated without overburdening larger hospitals and when necessary were sent to see “specialists”. Now everyone is driving helter skelter all over the peninsula. The system has changed! In many cases Doctors have become business men, nurses have become diagnosticians, Nursing assistants have become nurses, ambulance personal have to be all of the above rolled into one and make life and death split second decisions. They have complete control over us, and we at home, have to self diagnose.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
LikeLike
Open Forum where you can come to listen to what is happening in our Health System will be held in Fort Erie on January 20th at 7:00 P.M.
Location: St. Pauls Anglican Church on the Niagara Blvd at the corner of Gilmore Rd. and the Blvd. Wayne Redekop will be the moderator and stories will be told. Good and Bad. All are Welcomed.
LikeLike
I continue to hear, see,and KNOW that F.E. is being shortchanged to a critical degree by those who do not suffer the consequences of their new rules and regulations!! We are not going to sit back & allow this to happen. Come out to support our LIFE & DEATH cause….Watch the papers for ads re: this meeting. WE NEED YOUR INPUT AND SUPPORT!! Our tax dollars are going down the QEW to benefit everyone but us! anne
LikeLike
What is the saddest part of this most recent scenario is that we are not talking about a statistic but a fine young lady with all of her life ahead of her and the heartbreak of a family and friends who lost her too soon.
What was the cause of this accident? Terrible weather and road conditions. What was one of the main concerns of Fort Erie and Port Colborne rersidents regarding ER closures? Terrible weather and road conditions. What likely complicated response and delivery times in this case? Terrible weather and road conditions. What does the NHS not understand about this.
I’m sure all medical personel did their utmost to save this young girl but an inquest is vital and absolutely necessary. Did Reilly die from blood loss or respiratory distress? Were the paramedics on site advanced level and able to cope with the complications? Had Reilly been sent to Fort Erie or Port Colborne, both of which are closer, could blood products or respiratory assistance have saved her? These questions MUST be answered. If the answers indicate the recent changes in the delivery of health care to our communities are responsible, as I believe is also likely in the case of Mr. Davis, heads MUST roll.
Perhaps the “great and wise” leaders of the NHS
can swallow their egos and rethink their plans, develop some back bone and ethics and stand up for the people who pay them their exorbitant salaries through their tax dollars. While they are at it, some of their ridiculous incomes could be redirected to hire nurses, RTs, paramedics, etc. who actually DO SOMETHING to help you and me.
LikeLike
The NHS was originally created to deal with costs. They botched that. Then these lay-managers stuck their noses into clinical matters. There they have created chaos. Yes, “NHS = DOA” is a most apt and descriptive formula. /W. F. Hogg MD (retired)
LikeLike
NHS’s decision has created a situation where the closest Emergency Room to Fort Erie is now, arguably, in a different country. How many more lives will be put in jeopardy before “bean counters” place the value of human life ahead of fists full of money?
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Anzovino family… NHS can’t control that.
May God rest Reilly’s soul and may God help the next victim of an accident in Fort Erie.
Respectfully,
The McCarthy Family
Crystal Beach
LikeLike
To Whom It May Concern at NHS
Many months ago, in an unsolicited fashion but in an educational spirit, I emailed to you hypothetical vignettes of certain ‘time-critical’ emergencies that NHS’s ill-considered closure of rural and small town emergency departments would create. I therein emphasized the possibility of totally unnecessary deaths in transit – bureaucratic death-artifacts. Of note, copies of these clinical vignettes simultaneously went off to LHIN, EMS, and other concerned parties. By totally ignoring my cautions, NHS is now publicly equated with DOA. The ugly formula “NHS = DOA” is now your main Southern Tier PR. Were current events not so tragic, NHS’s name would be the laughing stock of health care management everywhere. May I again draw to your attention that at the conclusion of each ‘time-critical’ clinical vignette, NHS was also warned of the future legal consequences of its incompetence and utter neglect of all common sense medical advice. Now, a copy of this little reminder is being distributed to every local stakeholder conceivable and many beyond.
William Hogg MD FRCP (retired)
LikeLike
Well we all know the NHS is trying to wipeout
Fort Erie and Port Colbourne…but noone
has said anything about our weather in the
winter. Right now we have 2 ft of snow on the
ground and in Welland they have less than 1.
Not sure about Niagara Falls but I would think
they dont have as much as we do.
I hope that the inquest figures out as to whether
or not the young lady’s death could have been
averted if she had gotten to a hospital closer
to accident scene.
I feel so bad that a life was lost. My
deepest sympathy to the family. I hope this
doesnt happen to another family. But I know
it will.
Marian Miller
Fort Erie Ont
LikeLike
. I hope that the inquest figures out as to whether
or not the young lady’s death could have been
averted if she had gotten to a hospital closer
to accident scene.
I feel so bad that a life was lost. My
deepest sympathy to the family. I hope this
doesnt happen to another family.
Marian Miller
Fort Erie Ont
LikeLike
Let’s do something. Talk is getting us nowhere. They are just not listening. We need a large public action to get the attention of the Premier. Money talks, maybe there’s a way to cut off their supply of our hard-earned tax dollars. What can we do as the Niagara Region to really send a message that the blood of an innocent 18-year-old girl is on their hands. At the very least let’s have an inquest into her death with our goal to reopen our emergency rooms. Enough is enough.
LikeLike