Choking death review should be made public, Horne says
Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne says he expects the results of an internal medical review to be made public in the case of a dementia patient who died at Rockyview General Hospital, allegedly after choking on her food.
Alberta Health Services is conducting a “quality assurance review” into the July 25 death of Wendy Miller, 64, at the southwest Calgary hospital.
An AHS spokesman said Tuesday the results of the probe will be shared directly with Miller’s family, but otherwise the review remains confidential.
But Horne said private medical system reviews should be the “exception,” not the norm.
“My opinion is that it would be the exception where a review was not made public,” Horne said. “Barring any legal restrictions on it, I would expect that the results of this review (into Miller’s death) would be made public and that everyone would have the opportunity to look at the information and, most importantly, look at what can be done to prevent something like this from happening.”
Miller was admitted to Rockyview on July 9 over concerns for her mental health, according to her husband, Angus Miller.
Angus said hospital officials told him his wife died after choking on food, and that the facility appeared to have experienced some issues with nurse call buttons that day.
While AHS hasn’t commented on circumstances around the death citing the ongoing review, a patient advocate said Tuesday the information that hospital staff shared with Angus Miller in his wife’s case raises “red flags.”
“These quality assurance reviews happen, then the public has no idea … if they’ve fixed these problems,” said Rick Lundy of Open Arms Patient Advocacy Society. “That’s what we, as patients, deserve to know. If an error happens, how are they fixing it to ensure it doesn’t happen again?”
The case has some “great ingredients” for a fatality inquiry, which is conducted in public before a judge at the request of the justice minister, Lundy said.
Miller’s death came after a 68-yearold man who had been admitted to a general medical unit at Rockyview Hospital walked away from the facility through an alarmed exit door. His body was pulled from the Glenmore Reservoir on July 20.
Both deaths are the subject of separate AHS reviews, said spokesman Don Stewart.
“The findings will be shared directly with the families and, if there are learnings/system improvements that arise from the review, these would be implemented where appropriate, i.e.: at the site, within the zone or across all zones, depending on the nature of the findings,” Stewart wrote in an e-mail statement. “These reviews are not public documents.”
Wildrose seniors critic Kerry Towle called on AHS to conduct an “open and transparent” probe.
“If those reviews never get to be public or never show what went wrong, then they’re not effective,” Towle said.
The province has fallen far behind in providing long-term care spaces for some of Alberta’s most vulnerable patients, Towle said.
Liberal health critic David Swann called for a “full disclosure on these troubling events.” Angus Miller said Tuesday he’s in favour of making the results of the AHS probe into his wife’s death public, and would be open to participating in a fatality inquiry.