Ex-hospital executive took calls about VIPS
‘Felt pressure’ regarding some patients
A former top executive at the University of Alberta Hospital said Thursday she used to receive calls from higher-ups, including the head of the Capital Health Authority, on behalf of prominent patients.
In an appearance at the inquiry into preferential access to health care, Deb Gordon, former chief operating officer with Capital Health, said she occasionally received calls from Sheila Weatherill, Capital Health’s CEO at the time, as well as from officials with the hospital’s foundation.
“It was my feeling that the foundation’s leaders were making us aware a donor was there, and hoped things would go smoothly,” Gordon said.
The calls from Weatherill would usually occur after someone with a connection to a prominent patient had first contacted the CEO’s office, Gordon said.
“It would be something like, ‘Just so you are aware, so and so is in the hospital,’ ” said Gordon, who served as the hospital’s vice-president and chief operating officer in 200708. “I don’t believe we were asked to do anything. It was just a heads-up as a courtesy to let us know they were in our presence.”
Though she was never directed to provide preferential service, Gordon said the requests made her uncomfortable, and she eventually told Weatherill’s office the calls were a waste of time.
“They knew that, but continued to supply us with the information,” said Gordon, now a senior vice-president and the chief of nursing for Alberta Health Services.
“They would continue to call. I felt pressure from time to time.”
The hearings, which were ordered by Premier Alison Redford and are being presided over by Justice John Vertes, resume Monday at the Shaw Conference Centre.
They will continue two weeks before reconvening in Calgary in January. Vertes is tasked with determining whether preferential access to health care is taking place, and if so, to make recommendations to prevent it.
Gordon’s testimony came a day after the inquiry heard that an executive at the hospital badgered emergency room staff in 2007 in an attempt to get expedited treatment for a prominent patient.
Dr. Brian Holroyd, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine, felt the behaviour was so offensive that he wrote a formal letter of complaint about the senior administrator, whose pestering reduced one nurse in the busy department to tears.
Gordon served as the supervisor to the administrator, but said she didn’t recall the incident that Holroyd’s letter described, and never made any inquiries into the identity of the patient. Although she met with the target of the complaint, she didn’t remove her from her position, nor was she ever disciplined.
“We took it as (an) improvement opportunity,” Gordon said.
Gordon met in her office with Holroyd and the administrator on April 9, 2008, but said as she remembers it, crowding and other issues related to the emergency room was the main topic, and that the complaint Holroyd filed never came up. She may have taken notes during the meeting, but if she did, Gordon said she has been unable to find them.
On Wednesday, Holroyd said it was suggested during that meeting it would have been more appropriate for him to talk to the administrator about the problem privately than to write a complaint letter.
“There was no negative feedback to him about putting it in writing,” Gordon responded Thursday.
In his letter, Holroyd requested a review of the incident under Capital Health’s Workplace Respect Policy, but Gordon said none was ever initiated, nor did she ever discuss the complaint with her supervisor, Michele Lahey, the health authority’s senior vice-president.
Asked if the administrator’s attempts to move a dignitary ahead of sicker patients in the waiting room was unacceptable, Gordon hedged.
“It’s very difficult to say,” she said. “There may have been compelling reasons to move him out of ER. There may have been a privacy issue or other things.”
Gordon said although there was no formal policy, requests for preferential treatment were frowned upon then, and would also be now.
“But you made no inquiries into who the VIP was?” Vertes asked. “You made no inquiries to see who contacted the executive on call to let them know the VIP was there?”