MUHC PATIENTS EXPOSE CUTS

The Patients’ Committee of the McGill University Health Centre has documented hundreds of examples of services being slashed and care being compromised as the hospital has sought to cut $120 million in recent years in keeping with a 10-yearold clinical plan.

Douglas Burns owes his life to a heart transplant he received more than 20 years ago. But now he’s worried because his quarterly followups have been reduced to every six months even though he has potentially cancerous skin lesions due to the anti-rejection drugs.

Falk Kyser says the program that changed his life and those of other Montrealers with chronic disease by teaching them ways to cope with their ailments outside hospital is coming to an end in August.

As a volunteer who helped with the training, he estimates the sessions have saved the health system over $10 million since it started a decade ago, but costs about $150,000 a year to operate.

Pierre Hurteau, the co-chair of the MUHC Patients’ Committee, said prevention workshops that help cancer survivors like himself once treatment is over have recently been suspended for a few months because the nurse who ran it was needed elsewhere.

There have been delays for surgery. A patient diagnosed with Stage 1 lung cancer has progressed to Stage 3 — which is inoperable — by the time they made it to the operating theatre.

There have been delays for tests and results. Patients are sometimes waiting up to five hours for blood work. And since there aren’t enough chairs in the test centre of the brand new, state-of-the-art Glen campus, people are collapsing.

“We’ve had code blues,” Hurteau said.

Another patient hospitalized with kidney problems was discharged before the test results came back only to be called by their doctor and told to return to the MUHC by ambulance because their life was in jeopardy.

They decried delays getting appointments now that secretaries have been cut and patients are routed through the centralized appointment-booking system.

One patient was told to return for wound-care one week after surgery but couldn’t get an appointment until three weeks post-operation, resulting in a mess for the doctor to deal with.

Parents of children in clinical trials for a new medication to prevent blindness have to call 20 or more times so their kids can return for monitoring every two weeks as required.

A stroke patient who was discharged was told to return for followup in a week but was given an appointment six months later and relapsed in the meantime.