Despicable Emergency Patient Care in Winnipeg

A homeless, legless street person tried to get emergency care at a Winnipeg hospital but was ignored for 34 (yes, 34) hours until someone noticed he had passed away. Rigour mortis had actually set in so the poor man must have been dead for quite a while with not one of those supposedly caring hospital personnel checking on him. An autopsy showed he'd died from a bladder infection.

In Canada it's a well known and accepted fact that you don't want to go near a hospital emergency room unless you're in dire straits because of the long wait you can expect. I once sat in the emergency waiting room for 5 hours and finally decided to take my sick body home instead of possibly picking up more germs at the hospital.

How could no-one have noticed this sick, legless man sitting in the waiting room for 34 hours. That's almost a day and a half!!! I believe it was another patient and not even a nurse who cared enough to check on him. Our health care system has reached a new low.

We also know that some people abuse the system by going to the emergency room instead of to their family doctors but the truth is that many people don't have a personal family doctor. There are clinics, though, that serve the same purpose so there's no need to go to emergency with a cold or a small cut to your finger. Patients like these clog emergency and contribute to the problem.

I feel strongly that there should be a small surcharge for using the emergency room. Just a $5.00 charge would keep the numbers down because, at heart, we're all cheap. My friend, who is a nurse, said that wouldn't work because civil rights advocates would scream that the poor couldn't afford emergency care. I feel that if you can afford to turn up at the emergency room in a taxi you can afford the $5.00 surcharge.

What about having a clinic attached to the hospital where patients without apparent serious problems could be rerouted? There really has to be an answer to overcrowded and understaffed emergency rooms because it's only getting worse.

The homeless man who died unnecessarily and within reach of the best services available to us should be an eye opener to the people in charge of Canadian health care. This was an abomination that should never be tolerated.