TRAGIC LESSONS IN HEALTH CARE: GREG’S STORY AIMS TO EDUCATE
For anyone with knowledge of the Alberta film and television industry, the names associated with the short film Falling Through the Cracks: Greg ’s Story will be familiar.
Dean Bennett is the awardwinning, longtime director of Heartland. Screenwriter Andrew Wreggitt has won numerous Gemini and Canadian Screen Awards in his 30-year career. Casting director Rhonda Fisecki and sound designer Frank Laratta have both been nominated for Emmy Awards. Actor Kevin McGarry, who plays Greg Price, is known in these parts for his recurring role of hunky ranch hand Mitch Cutty in Heartland. Greg Lawson, who plays his father Dave, is a versatile film, TV and theatre actor who has had roles on Heartland, Wynonna Earp and Fargo.
All in all, not a bad lineup of talent for a film initially designed to educate first-year medical students. Education remains the thrust of the 29-minute short, which tells the tragic and occasionally infuriating story of Greg Price’s journey through the Alberta health-care system. But the film is also a beautifully shot, wellpaced, well-acted drama that tugs at the heartstrings while revealing a fragmented health system that failed a 31-year-old Albertan.
It’s been nominated for seven Alberta Film and Television Awards (the Rosies), which will be held Saturday in Calgary.
“Initially, we thought it was just going to be a few video modules,” says Teri Price, Greg ’s sister and one of the executive producers of Falling Through the Cracks. “As the project evolved and we got different people involved, it turned into this super high-quality short film that we are really proud of. It snowballed after more people got involved.”
Greg Price, a 31-year-old engineer and baseball enthusiast, died in 2012 not long after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. A few days after surgery to remove a cancerous testicle, he collapsed and died of a blood clot at his family home in Acme.
Falling Through the Cracks shows how Greg ’s case did just that, chronicling the breakdown in communication between providers and general lack of continuity in care that his family believes played a part in his premature death.
His case was examined by Dr. Ward Flemons in 2013 in a 92page report for the Health Quality Council of Alberta, which resulted in 13 recommendations to improve patient care. It was Flemons who first suggested using Greg’s story as a teaching tool, specifically for first-year medical students at the University of Calgary.
Through a mutual friend, he contacted Andrew Wreggitt. The veteran Calgary screenwriter has worked on everything from Corner Gas: The Movie to The Beachcombers, to the 2008 TV movie Mayerthorpe, which won him a Gemini Award. Wreggitt says elements of Greg ’s story hit home, having witnessed similar experiences as his parents and his wife’s parents dealt with Alberta’s health-care system.
“What impressed me about the Price family, other than their determination to do something, was that they were not interested in laying blame anywhere,” Wreggitt says. “What they wanted to see was a positive outcome, where Greg ’s experience could be used to make things safer for everyone. I was keen to help them out in whatever way we could.”
Which meant doing what he does best, turning Greg ’s experiences into a compelling drama. Sadly, it required no embellishment. Wreggitt
says he stuck to the facts when telling the story.
He also enlisted Dean Bennett, an old hand in Alberta television whom he had known since their days working on the Alberta series North of 60 in the 1990s. Bennett enlisted Kevin McGarry and others in the industry to help out with the film.
“In every case, whenever we reached out to someone we said: ‘No one is going to make any money at this, we’re just going to be covering costs here,’ ” Wreggitt says. “They all said they wanted to be involved. They had all had a similar experience. They had a relative or friend or someone they knew who had gone through something similar. People were very engaged in what the film was intended to do. So we gathered this little group together and went out and made a movie.”
On May 17, Falling Through the Cracks will make its public premiere with a sold-out screening at the Plaza Theatre. Screenings are also planned for Vancouver, Ottawa and St. John’s. The Price family also wants to make the film available to outside groups or organizations that want to hold their own screenings. In 2019, it will be made available on the website for Greg’s Wings, an advocacy organization the family founded in Greg ’s memory. As an educational tool, it has already been embedded into the curriculum for first-year med students at the University of Calgary and there is interest from medical schools across the country to do the same.
“Some of the med students were quite angry,” says Teri Price. “They’ve made the choice to be part of the health-care system, so when they see (the film) they are angry that it could actually happen and are wondering what to do so that they don’t contribute to any of the issues they see. They don’t want to be part of a system that functions in the way that you see in the film.”
For the Price family — Greg had two sisters and two brothers — the journey can still be difficult, but they take strength from those in the health-care system who are “doing their very best to make things better,” says Greg ’s father, Dave Price.
“We’re sensitive to the fact that it has the potential to be pretty emotional,” he says. “What we want to make sure is that people come out of it with some hope and some plans to move forward positively rather than with frustration or disappointment and going out on the dark side and not being able to learn from it as much as we’d like. We don’t want it to go sour, we want it to be a positive influence on supporting people who want to make improvements.”