Quebec health minister Gaétan Barrette questions case of St. Mary’s patient death

Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette denied on Monday that his reforms to the health-care system played any role in the death of an emergency-room patient who was denied potentially life-saving surgery at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Gaétan Barrette said the case “should have been handled differently” and the surgeon in question “made a decision on the basis of a situation that was debatable.”

The surgeon said he was no longer allowed to perform emergency vascular surgeries as part of new protocol.

Last November, Mark Blandford, 73, walked into St. Mary’s with abdominal pain that turned out to be an aortic aneurysm. Despite his critical condition, he was transferred to the MUHC, but died before he could receive care.

Health Minister refused to comment further saying the case is now in the hands of the chief coroner and the Quebec College of Physicians.

Gaétan Barrette said the procedure of transferring patients in such cases is the norm because hospitals now have new and individualized mandates, citing the example of a patient suffering a heart attack at the Montreal Neurological Institute or a patient suffering a brain aneurysm at the Montreal Heart Institute; Barrette said those patients would have to be transferred, “that’s the way it is.”

Agencies/Canadajournal