By Christine Dominico
(Prior to this posting of Christine Dominico’s disturbing account about the quality of care she says her mother received at a Niagara, Ontario hospital site, a copy of this story was sent to the Niagara Health System, the board responsible for operating most of the region’s hospital services, for a response. We include it here, at the head of Christine Dominico’s report.
“As you are aware,” stated a senior communications officer for the NHS to NAL, “ the hospital cannot comment on or release information around specific patient cases. Our duty is to maintain patient confidentiality and respect the privacy of patients. Niagara Health’s desire and goal is for every patient and their family to have a positive experience. At times where we fall short of this goal, we want to hear from patients and their loved ones so that we can follow-up and address those areas where our team can do better. Compassion, Professionalism and Respect are our hospital’s core values and our expectation is that every member of our team lives up these values in their interactions with all. We ask patients and families to let us know when we can do better. Feedback in the form of compliments and/or concerns will assist us to reinforce our efforts to provide quality care. It ensures that areas of improvement are identified and quality assurance initiatives are acted upon. We ask our patients and their families to share their compliments and/or concerns with our Patient Relations Specialist Natalie Foster. Natalie is located at Ontario Street Site and can be reached at 905-378-4647, extension 44423 or by e-mail at Natalie.Foster@niagarahealth.on.ca.”)
Lucky for former Prime Minister Jean Chretien that he does not live in the Niagara Region.
Christine and her mother Lucy
If he had gone to the St. Catharines General Hospital in an ambulance, the emergency department may not have recognized the need for urgency, even if he had had an open head wound.
They may have just stitched him up and sent him home. If he didn’t lose consciousness when he bumped his head, they would not err on the side of caution and admit him for observation. After all, he is old. …76 years old, isn’t he?
Elderly people may be hard to get out of hospital once they are admitted. And the LHIN (the Local Health Integration Network appointed by the province to steer health care services) is pressuring doctors to keep the costs down. Oh, and do a CT-scan on an old person who is showing no signs of a concussion? That’s out of the question.
Why am I so sure about all this? Because my mother, Lucy McCarthy, died on May 25, 2010 from a massive subdural hemorrhage that could have been avoided if she had been given an immediate CT-scan. But the St. Catharines General’s Emergency Department did not rate her accident as serious enough. Even though she was on blood thinners (Coumadin), and had had a fall of more than three feet that left an open head wound, which required two layers of sutures to be closed, they sent her back to her retirement home.
If she had been 45 years old she would no doubt have received that CT-scan that saved Chretien’s life. My mom was an active 90 year old who was not ready to die.
She was a voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction, and played a mean game of Scrabble. She kept up with her emails and was even on Facebook.
In any discussion of current events, her comments won her the respect of much younger people. She took care of her own finances and was quicker than most to secure her investments in the recent monetary crisis. She enjoyed shopping for clothes, visiting her children and travelling. She was knowledgeable but was still eager to learn new things. Well-known to both her children and her grandchildren to have a sharp memory, a call to mom could replace the encyclopedia or the internet and was much more fun. She taught us how to handle our woes with humour and a sense of perspective.
When she died, she was in the midst of knitting a baby sweater for yet another great grandchild and an afghan for the next grandchild to take away to university. No, she was not ready to die.
But the St. Catharines General Hospital Emergency Department seemed unconcerned about the possibility. She was misdiagnosed twice there. First, on May 22 when she arrived by ambulance, bleeding profusely from her forehead after a serious fall, she was stitched up but was not given a CT-scan or even kept in for observation. That would have been the cautious thing to do. Nope. They just sent her back to her Mount Carmel retirement home, which was not a nursing facility with instructions for wound care.
The second misdiagnosis was on May 24, when she returned to The St. Catharines General by ambulance in severe pain and experiencing nausea. Her face was black and blue and she had a contusion protruding one inch over her right brow. The emergency department rated her case as only of medium import. Would they have left her lying, suffering for seven hours if she had been a much younger person?
When the doctor on duty finally decided to give her a CT scan it was too late. Her speech was slurred and she lost consciousness two hours later, dying the next day, May 25.
We all hate to think that we need to have important contacts and highly placed advocates to get the proper care in our hospitals. After all, how many of us are former PM’s? We all expect to receive the best medical advice and attention that our hospitals can offer, regardless of our station, or our age. But this event has left me cynical, frightened and frustrated.
I am cynical about health care in the Niagara Region: I can see why it has the highest mortality rates in the province. I am frightened for the next elderly accident victim who is on Coumadin and needs an immediate CT scan. It seems unlikely that the protocol followed for Chretien will be available for him or her if he/she goes to the St. Catharines General Emergency for help.
I am frustrated: I want to ensure that the Niagara Health System (the board responsible for operating most of the hospitals services in the region) follows the proper head injury protocol for anyone, regardless of age, on anti-coagulants but, without a lawsuit, I am at a loss as to how this can be accomplished.
Hence this piece for Niagara at Large.
Christine Dominico is a resident of Marmora, north of Port Hope and Bellville, Ontario, and whose late mother lived in Niagara and who shared this personal account with Niagara At Large.
(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region. And share your comment with us on this and other issues.)
Niagara At Large 
First, I hope this family will accept my deepest sympathy. Second, as a retired doctor who has practised and taught medicine both in Niagara and in other places (Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Buffalo NY), I have something else to say. Medicare in our Niagara hospitals is run by lay-administrators (anti or non-medical people) who place the crassest business ethic first. They have virtually no idea what ancient medical Hippocratic principles stand for. Nor do they understand the standard of nursing care espoused by Florence Nightingale. As well, even our best and finest nurses and doctors in and peripheral to the system are ignored and get demoralized. They are also overworked within NHS and tired. Thus is set a climate ripe to foster tragic sequences similar to the one this elderly lady fell victim to. As I have said many times before: there will be many more totally unnecessary deaths as a result of NHS’s grossly block-headed – unwise – neglect or ignorance of proper ways to deal with sick and injured patients. When the sad outcome of disability or death happens, then typical big business alibis are trundled out by the lay-administrators and the propagandists they hire. They invariably spout out patently precooked nonsense as printed at the front end of this sad article. Truth is glossed over. That is shameful to find in the close vicinity of the noble work of nurses and doctors. I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough.
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First, I hope this family will accept my deepest sympathy. Second, as a retired doctor who has practised and taught medicine both in Niagara and in other places (Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Buffalo NY), I have something else to say. Medicare in our Niagara hospitals is run by lay-administrators (anti or non-medical people) who place the crassest business ethic first. They have virtually no idea what ancient medical Hippocratic principles stand for. Nor do they understand the standard of nursing care espoused by Florence Nightingale. As well, even our best and finest nurses and doctors in and peripheral to the system are ignored and get demoralized. They are also overworked within NHS and tired. Thus is set a climate ripe to foster tragic sequences similar to the one this elderly lady fell victim to. As I have said many times before: there will be many more totally unnecessary deaths as a secondary result of NHS’s grossly block-headed – unwise – neglect or ignorance of proper ways to deal with sick and injured patients. When the sad outcome of disability or death ultimately happens, then typical big business alibis are trundled out by the lay-administrators and the propagandists they hire. They invariably spout out, spin, patently precooked nonsense as printed at the front end of this sad article. Truth is glossed over. That is shameful to find in the close vicinity of the noble work of nurses and doctors. I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough.
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Seems reasonable to think another inquest may be in order.
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Please excuse me if this is repeated as previous a post may not have gone through.
Old people (young people, poor people, accident victims, those who don’t live in Niagara Falls or St. Catharines, those without connections) seem to be becoming more and more expendable according to some NHS brass. If these folks are eliminated, there will be fewer beds required. More beds and services can be closed and – VOILA! – they’ve balanced the budget! How wonderful.
You can bet Debbie Sevenfigure’s mother or grandmother would have had a CAT scan even if it was 3 am and required calling in staff.
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It is a shame how our health care system has deteriorated. That homey feeling of trust has gone. Beds and staff keep getting cut (another 41 more beds slated to close this year) and the NHS brass is mainly concerned about reducing the budget to make way for the extra costs of the new regional hospital being built in northwest Niagara. The morale at all the hospitals is abysmal. They can hardly contain their displeasure. If they get you behind closed doors they tell you what they really think about what is going on in the NHS. I got a phonecall from someone in administration, who had to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job. After a litany of complaints they told me everyone there refers to the NHS as the Niagara Hell System. We NEED an investigation.
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Dr. Hogg is a clear, learned, and experienced voice. One would think by now even the lay-administrators would have the good sense to listen. Clearly, there really is nothing as uncommon as common sense.
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Christine & family & especially Mom:
So sorry about your loss and your experience, I hope that you will find peace at some point, not sure when that will be. Personally I do not think that age had everything to do with this situation. I think that people in power are lining their wallets and putting our lives at risk whether we are young or elderly. I think that they are monsters and have used their power to invade our towns and cities and instead of improving our ER’s and hospitals with better equipment and the capabilities to save lives, they have removed our safety nets and lessened our chances for survival. I know in my heart these decisions made a difference in my own daughters chances for survival and she was only 18. They need to remove their earmuffs and blinkers and start using the “I” in the Hospital Improvement Plan. They took our’s away! It should be called the Hospital Destruction Plan.
Again I am sorry for your loss and pain, I can only pray that somehow your Mom and many others who have suffered at the hands of the NHS is with my daughter on the committee to get rid of this disease that is costing us our loved ones lives.
Take Care
(A note from NAL – Denise Kennedy is the mother of Reilly Anzovino, the 18 year old who died last December after being ambulanced to an emergency room at a hospital site in Welland, Ontario. An Ontario coroner’s inquest is being held to determine if Reilly would still be alive if the emergency room at the hospital in her hometown of Fort Erie had not been closed earlier in 2009 by the Niagara Health System.)
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With the present NHS we are all goners,It is time to launch a class action suit against the Mc,Guinty Government, Minister of Hell, Debbie Matthews and Director/CAO, Debbie Sevenpifer for denial of services, It is useless to appeal to these peoples sense of justice or compassion they don’t have any we have to go to the Supreme Court of Ontario and sue for redress, and failure to supply a service that we are paying for and not getting. Under old Anglo Saxon law, we don’t have to pay for a service that we are not getting.
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Some doctors, including Dr. Hogg, have beeen very proactive about finding a solution to this health care mess.
Can the medical community as a whole spearhead some sort of protest to help remedy this situation?
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