Fatal medical mistakes all dressed up in secrecy at Canadian hospitals

BY MICHAEL THOMAS

Most people say, “I’ve got the best doctors, I’ve got the best nurses, but there are others who say, “They killed my mother.”

These are the words of patient safety expert Darrell Horn who also said, he has yet to meet a doctor, or nurse even though he’s interviewed hundreds, who went to work one morning with the intent to purposely hurt someone.

That said, there are numerous cases of patients here in Canada who went to hospitals for very straightforward procedures only to be severely injured or in some cases ended up dead. Let’s have a look at a few cases.

Anna Maria Fiocco was 62, a few years ago and underwent surgery to fix a leaky heart valve. She woke up a paraplegic, the “unfortunate victim,” of what a judge called a therapeutic accident.

When Anna went for a follow-up visit with the surgeon, she enquired, “Why am I like this,” referring to her wheelchair-bound condition, and he replied, “Things happen,” she was told, according to her family.

The family of Kamryn Bond a 12-year-old Grande Prairie, Alberta girl, who had both legs amputated below the knee when she was 11 months old and lost a couple of her fingers too, accused the hospital and doctors involved in her care of misdiagnosing her bacterial lung infection, which developed into sepsis and septic shock. Now this child’s mother has launched a $31.7-million lawsuit in Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench against the doctors.

Fighting these malpractice cases in Canada’s court is not an easy process, because the medical fraternity is well-protected and well-funded as we will find out.

The fact remains that while some might sue the hospitals, few have the financial or emotional means to go up against hospital insurers or the Canadian Medical Protective Association, which is a defense fund for doctors, and whose membership premiums are heavily subsidized by taxpayers (aka the patients themselves). In layman’s terms, this is like paying an alligator to eat you.

Canadian Medical Protective Association – CMPA over the last decade has paid compensation to its patients to the tune of $2.29 billion, an average of $229 million per year. Please take note that this compensation only takes place in cases where there is no way out for CMRA.

Remember Anna from paragraph four? She and her family were tired of the lack of answers from doctors and the hospital, so they sued. This is what her sister-in-law Nicklin said, “We went the full nine yards, and we lost.” The family also lost more than $200,000 in legal fees in the process.

Anna suffered for several years; finally, she spent five weeks in hospital and died last year of sepsis complications caused by her spinal injuries; she was 73.

In the case of the child who lost her limbs, the doctors have contested the allegation that they provided lousy care, and the family’s $31.7 million lawsuit is under reserve with the trial judge. Let us look at how all this becomes possible.

The Ontario legislation requires that systems be in place to ensure every critical incident is disclosed to the patient, however, in some cases, the incident is referred for review by a quality-of-care committee, reviews that are protected from “certain disclosures.”

“Things like this happen so that staff can share their observations freely and changes can be made as a result of lessons learned. The details of the case may not be shared, but the family always gets the facts of the incident.” These are the words of Anthony Dale, president and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association.

“You may not be allowed to view the details of the case, but the facts of the incident will be shared with you.” Let that sink in for a moment people!  So, when it comes to holding Canadian hospitals accountable, we can see that the chances are not good. “Nothing the nurses or doctors tell (investigators) about what happened that day will ever be made public,” said patient safety expert Darrell Horn. “It’s all covered under the umbrella of privilege.”

The New England Journal of Medicine did a comparison study on malpractice claims in Canada, contrasting it with that in the United States, and this is part of what was found, “In Canada, malpractice cases are typically decided by a judge alone, without a jury, and it is believed that Canadian judges are more conservative with the insurance company’s money than U.S. juries, regardless of the legal merits of the case.”

This information makes it easy to see why the same study found that the number of claims filed per physician is about eight times higher in the United States than in Canada.

Finally, let us look at some disturbing numbers in the hospital business. Although the true scale is unknown, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, one in 17 hospitalizations in 2021-22 roughly 140,000 out of 2.4 million hospital stays resulted in someone experiencing a harmful event that was significant enough to require treatment or a prolonged hospital stay.