Patient shocked by theft in hospital
Credit cards stolen from purse during visit to Regina General
in the ER. “I’d like to see them caught before someone else has to go through this,” Stubbington said.
From her hospital bed, she filed a report with Regina police and an officer gave her his phone so she could cancel her credit cards immediately.
Earlier on Feb. 15, she withdrew money from the bank so she knew she had $100 in her wallet plus change, a gift card, a number of credit cards and all of her ID.
“I was at my doctor’s again Wednesday because my blood pressure and my heart rate went high again,” Stubbington said. “When I went to the hospital they said, ‘Can we see your health card?’ and I said, ‘No.’ “
The 66-year-old paid $15 to get a temporary driver’s licence and is in the process of replacing her health card and the rest of her identification.
“My whole life was in my purse,” Stubbington said. “I had a picture of my husband who passed away nine years ago, my grandchildren and I had a blessing coin that was given to me by my sister when I had six bypasses a few years back.”
Her son, Shayne, is infuriated by the theft.
“It’s just terrible to take advantage of someone who is in the hospital,” he said. “I can’t believe someone would have the audacity to do that. It just blows me away.”
He’s also angry the hospital didn’t safeguard her possessions — particularly a patient brought in by ambulance. to the cardiac monitors and she went out and came back in and said, ‘Is this your CAA card, Marlene?’ I said, ‘Where did you get that from? It was in my wallet.’ ”
The card was found in a nearby room. Stubbington started crying when she discovered her wallet was not in her purse, which was sitting on a chair with her clothes.
“How many people is this happening to?” she asked. “Is there not a camera in those places?”
She wonders why there wasn’t immediate action at the time of the theft when there were numerous police officers and security personnel Marlene Stubbington no longer feels safe in the hospital. In fact, she feels violated after her last experience as a patient.
Suffering heart problems, the Craik woman was brought by ambulance to the Regina General Hospital the evening of Feb. 15.
Early the next morning, Stubbington was sent for an X-ray. When she was brought back to her room in the emergency department her wallet was missing.
“I wasn’t even gone 10 minutes and the nurse was hooking me up
“They might as well have thrown her stuff on the street,” Shayne said. “They just left it sitting there so pretty much anybody could walk by it — it was a free for all.”
Marlene wonders how often patients are robbed at Regina hospitals.
“We are very sorry and concerned to hear of this loss,” said Bill Parrell, interim manager of security services for the Saskatchewan Health Authority in Regina.
“We are not able to readily provide accurate numbers of thefts or losses from patient rooms without doing a manual search of our records, which would take a significant amount of time.”
Thefts from patient rooms are rare, he added.
“Our staff, including our porters, make every effort to ensure patient belongings are kept secure in a way that takes into account the individual patient’s situation,” Parrell said.
Options to ensure patients’ belongings are secure include: transporting their belongings with them to tests; leaving the belongings in the care of family/friends who come in with the patient; or requesting security take custody of the valuables temporarily.
He confirmed there are surveillance cameras in the ER, but not in direct care areas.
“To date, our security has not received any requests for assistance from Regina Police Service on this, but we will be reviewing any materials or information we may have available that may be of value to the police,” Parrell said.
Meanwhile, Shayne is worried about the impact of the theft on his mother’s health.
Since returning home from hospital, she has spent hours replacing her ID and tracing credit card transactions billed after she cancelled her credit cards so she can write out a fraud report.
The thief went on a wide-ranging spending spree that included more than 100 stops at numerous locations. Between Feb. 18 and Feb. 20, $4,611 was charged on two credit cards.
“I think the police response is very, very slow,” Stubbington said. “When they started using the cards, it was on the 18th and it was reported on the 16th.”
As of Friday, Stubbington hadn’t determined if any illicit purchases were made on the third credit card she had in her large clutch wallet. The theft has left her shaken. “All I live on is my old age pension and that barely gets me by month to month,” Stubbington said. “I live alone. I can’t even sleep at night.”