Canadian health care at its less than best

From here:

Earlier this month, 82-year-old Ontario woman Doreen Wallace was walking out of a hospital in the Niagara Region when she had a fall, literally in the hospital’s front door. She cut herself badly and fractured her hip. If you’re going to take a tumble, you have to figure that a hospital’s main entrance is a pretty good place to do it. Not so, as it turns out — the hospital refused to admit her, claiming that the hospital could only treat her after she’d been attended to by paramedics. Call 911, they were told, and wait for an ambulance.

As if that’s not bad enough (and it’s plenty bad), after her incredulous son made the call, the woman had to wait almost half an hour while an ambulance was brought in from another region. None were available locally, even though three were already at the hospital where Ms. Wallace had her fall! While people are understandably shocked at the thought of an injured woman laying in a hospital going untreated due to a bureaucratic requirement, the real scandal is that not only was a precious ambulance assigned to this task, but that none were available for 28 minutes.

First of all let me say that my experience with Canadian health care has been moderately good: I haven’t had to resort to calling 911 very often, but when I did, the response was quite fast. In fact, recently, it was so fast, I had two policemen appear on my doorstep even before I called 911 (the phone line was faulty and making calls on its own, apparently). After searching the house and casting an expert eye over my wife in search of bruising, the officers left with the satisfaction that comes from a job well done – to my chagrin, they never did say evening all.

Secondly, the ambulance episode doesn’t surprise me that much. When my father-in-law fell in his retirement home, the resident nurse was reluctant to help him up because it wasn’t part of her job, although she did manage to struggle to the phone to place a call to us. We drove to the home and, after delivering a brief but concentrated barrage of caustic sarcasm (well, that was me mostly), my wife and I picked him up ourselves.

Thirdly, it’s time for 82 year-olds to develop the respect for bureaucracy that it deserves: remember, when you fall down and break something it’s not about you, it’s about the process and metrics and making sure that the God-forsaken Kafkaesque nightmare you are about to enter has had all humanity extracted from it  – in order to serve you better.

Hospital still threatening to remove baby Joseph’s life support

This isn’t getting any better:

LONDON, Ontario, February 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While things were looking up for the parents of Joseph Maraachli this past weekend, the picture has now become bleaker. In the latest twist in the case the London hospital where their dying son is being cared for is seeking to remove the parents’ decision-making power after they refused to have him taken off life support. Hospital security is also denying them private visitations.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which has been offering support to the parents, Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader, says they are now only allowed to see their son with a security guard present.

“They fight my family. … they put security for me.  They never give me private to pray with my son,” Moe told Fox News this afternoon.

“Security watch me and security stay with me,” he added.  “When I go to hospital I feel I am not in Canada.  I feel I’m in jail or they kidnapped my baby.”

“It’s ridiculous.  It’s not like they could pick the child up and take him home.  The baby would die,” said Schadenberg.

Schadenberg said that Moe tried to bring him in to see Joseph on Monday, but security denied him access to the room, and told him to leave the premises.  “It’s become crazy.  The hospital’s going overboard and it makes no sense,” he said.

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The longer it goes on, the more it resembles a Kafkaesque nightmare created by unfeeling hospital apparatchiks.

Baby Joseph Maraachli is not allowed to die at home

One year old baby Joseph Maraachli is going to die; his parents want him to die at home. In order for that to happen, Joseph needs a tracheotomy to allow him to breath. The hospital refused and will remove his breathing tube Monday, which will cause him to choke to death. The hospital’s reason  for not doing the tracheotomy – which the courts upheld? It could cause infection or pneumonia.

R.I.P. Canadian health care, judicial sanity and baby Joseph.

From here:

With all of their legal avenues exhausted, the family will have to say goodbye to Joseph Monday morning — on Family Day — when his breathing tube will be removed.

“I do my best for my baby. My son is not a criminal . . . to just let him die,” dad Moe Maraachli said through tears.

“They are taking my baby away from me . . . Where is the humanity?”

He said he didn’t know how to break the news to his wife Sana Nader, who was too upset to sit through the day’s court proceedings, or explain to their seven-year-old son Ali what’s going to happen to his little brother.

Maraachli and Nader fought to bring Joseph home to Windsor so he could spend his last days surrounded by loved ones. Joseph suffers from a severe and deteriorating neurological condition that has left him in a persistent vegetative state, according to specialists in London, Ont., who’ve examined him. He’s been at the Victoria Hospital, part of London Health Sciences Centre, since October.

Nine years ago, Maraachli and Nader lost a daughter who suffered from health complications nearly identical to Joseph’s.

Although the couple has accepted their baby boy’s inevitable death, they insisted that it occur peacefully at home and not by removing his breathing tube, which will cause him to choke since he can’t swallow or breathe on his own. The parents asked for a tracheotomy, which would open up a direct airway through an incision in Joseph’s trachea and make it possible to bring the baby home.

But doctors refused to perform the procedure, citing serious risks of infection, pneumonia and other possible complications.