A Message From Hudak To Ontario Premier – Fix Niagara’s Hospital Mess Today!

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak wrote the following open letter to the province’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, in the wake of a deplorable incident earlier this October where 82-year-old Doreen Walker, who was visiting her dying husband at the Niagara Health System’s Niagara Falls hospital site, was left without help on the lobby floor for a reported 28 with a broken limb before she received help.

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak speaks in front of Niagara's Fort Erie Hospital in 2010 following closing of its emergency room. File photo

Before Niagara At Large posts Hudak’s letter, we want to point out that accounts of this incident in the media have given at least some people the impression that it took an ambulance attached to the Niagara regional government’s EMS services, and not to the NHS, 28 minutes to arrive at the scene after someone inside the hospital was told that 911 had to be called to help Wallace. John Sherwin, a spokesperson for EMS told NAL records showed that the ambulance arrived at the scene in seven minutes and 24 seconds after the 911 call was made. That may mean that there was some delay in making the call.

It is, in NAL’s view, a shame that Niagara Region’s EMS – an emergency response unit with an excellent reputation across the province and country – sometimes finds itself getting gummed up in delay times and other incidents that are more of the NHS’s making. And that doesn’t begin to account for the extra costs municipal taxpayers across Niagara are paying for our ambulance services due to the apparent willingness of the NHS to use our ambulances as mini-hospitals as they close emergency rooms and beds at hospital sites across the region.

Hudak’s letter to the premier follows in the wake of earlier expressions of upset over the Doreen Wallace incident and coverage on it that made national headlines. Here is Hudak’s letter to McGuinty.

October 20, 2011

Dear Mr. McGuinty,

I am writing in regards to a series of troubling, and quite frankly disgraceful, events that require your immediate attention and intervention.

I refer to recent news that a senior, Doreen Wallace, was denied emergency care after falling and breaking her hip near the entrance of the Greater Niagara General Hospital (GNGH) while on her way to visit her dying husband.

Mrs. Wallace was left on the floor of the hospital lobby for 28 minutes, as hospital staff told her family they needed to call an ambulance to admit her to the emergency room.

This was not an isolated incident. Three additional cases have been reported in the last year alone, where people drove their loved ones to GNGH with serious emergencies, only to be told to call for an ambulance to carry them a few short steps from the parking lot into the ER.

I shouldn’t have to tell you that in emergency health situations, minutes and even seconds count. It is unbelievable that in Ontario, in the year 2011, hospitals are turning away patients in distress.

This disturbing series of events requires your immediate response to the following three questions:

1. Who will lose their job for this complete lack of common sense and humanity for Ontario patients in distress?

One occurrence is unacceptable. Three or more at the same hospital is an absolute disgrace. Your Minister of Health – who you just rewarded with the same job in your new Cabinet – and top NHS officials knew about the previous occurrences and still have not stopped the problem from happening again and again. Those responsible for this lack of oversight must be held accountable.

2. How often are patients on hospital grounds left in parking lots or on floors being denied emergency care under similar circumstances and why?

If this problem goes beyond Greater Niagara General Hospital, Ontario families have a right to know how many times it is happening and where – and more importantly they deserve to know why.

3. What are you going to do to fix the problem today?

You should have addressed the issue at Greater Niagara General Hospital upon first learning of it. Your immediate action is still needed to ensure this doesn’t happen again – at this or any other hospital. If you or your Minister will not take immediate action to correct the problem, the Ontario PC Caucus is prepared to bring forward a solution to protect the health and safety of all Ontarians.

Sincerely,

Tim Hudak, MPP
Ontario PC Leader

(Feel free to share you views in the comment boxes below. Remember, we strive to keep the discussion here as civil as possible, given the circumstances, by requiring everyone to share their first and last names with their commentary.)