Clinic under review after testimony

CALGARY — Alberta Health Services is reviewing the practices of a Calgary cancer clinic accused of allowing patients to jump the queue for tests.

Chris Mazurkewich, the chief operating officer of AHS, says the review will ensure that care at the centre is based on clinical decision-making and patient need and nothing else.

Mazurkewich says they also want to determine why an internal investigation into reports of queue-jumping at the clinic in early 2012 did not find any evidence, only to a have evidence surface a year later at Alberta’s preferential access inquiry.

Mazurkewich says the investigation begins in May and is expected to be completed by the summer.

Patients’ charts and testimony at the preferential access inquiry revealed that for years patients at the private Helios Wellness Centre were seen and treated at the Colon Cancer Centre within months while everyone else waited years.

Employees of the colon cancer clinic say the queue-jumping stopped a year ago.