Film urging changes to health-care system set to screen in city

Greg Price, 31, was an Alberta mechanical engineer and private pilot when he died in 2012 from a blood clot caused by testicular cancer.

His family says his death could have been prevented — but wasn’t, because of the health-care system’s failure to provide continuous care.

“It was just sort of a series of gaps in his care which led to a late diagnosis,” said Greg ’s sister, Teri Price. She noticed these gaps in the transition between the doctor at the walk-in clinic he visited, to all the different tests he went through, to an ultrasound, to a CT scan and back to the clinic.

“There wasn’t continuity there at all, and a lot of delays for a variety of different reasons which sort of compounded the length of time it took to get a real diagnosis,” she said. Over a year passed between the first doctor raising a red flag to when Greg received any kind of diagnosis.

Teri said Greg went for surgery on a Wednesday, and died the following Saturday. Greg ’s pathology report confirming the cancer was only received after his death.

The short film Falling Through the Cracks: Greg ’s Story was created to show Greg ’s journey through the health-care system and the need for change.

On Thursday evening at the Pasqua Hospital Auditorium in Regina, the film will be showing in Saskatchewan for the first time.

Dr. Ron Taylor, section head of the family medicine hospitalists in Regina, hopes the film will help generate a conversation he has been working on creating for years.

“(The film) seemed to line up really nice with ourselves trying to get patients involved, and (the Prices’) desire to create a dialogue for front-line care providers and administrators in health care about the problems in the system and the unfortunate results,” he said.

Taylor is also a co-leader of the Accountable Care Unit at the Pasqua.

“What we’ve realized is that we need to have the patient’s voice in, not only in their own care, but in building and constructing how we deliver care on these units.”

Teri said her family has three “high-level priorities” for which they’ve been advocating:

A cultural shift in the health-care ■ system to work more as a team with the patient;

Patients having better access to ■ their own information and records,

And learning from failure within ■ the medical field.

She hopes the film has an effect on both medical professionals and the public, to inspire change in how people view the health-care system and the patient’s role in it.

The event is free and starts at 7 p.m. Thursday. lgiesbrecht@postmedia.com