It took eight years, a whistleblower and intervention from a state commissioner to uncover a fatal medical error in a Newfoundland hospital, one committed by a doctor with an (undisclosed) record of such actions. As Canadian broadcaster CTV reports, Canada’s free access to health care doesn’t translate to free access to information.
Here’s my summary of the story’s key events, as I understand them:
- A woman in Newfoundland dies soon after her ER doctor misdiagnosed a blood clot in her lung and gave her treatment that a colleague said would have been equivalent to a “lethal injection.”
- The victim’s family doesn’t know that anything was out of the ordinary until six years later, when the colleague contacted the family directly to explain what he believed to be a mistake.
- The family approaches the hospital for information, and gets a few treatment records, but is denied access to records from an internal investigation of the incident.
- Using the province’s FOI laws, the family again pushes for the investigation information. Their request is denied.
- Finally, “the family appealed to the province’s Information Commissioner, who ordered Eastern Health to hand over the records.”
- A year later, the records were disclosed – but key EKG information was not. Thus, the family’s fight for disclosure continues unabated.
