The family of a woman who died waiting for care in a Winnipeg emergency room last month say they want a public inquiry to look into her death after hospital leadership told them it could have been prevented.
A critical incident review is underway for Stacey Ross, 55, who died on Jan. 16 after an 11-hour wait for admission at St. Boniface Hospital. She had pneumonia and was septic before her death, according to hospital documents previously viewed by CBC News.
Her sister, Sheri Ross, says the family met with the hospital’s critical incident team last week and were told the 55-year-old’s troponin levels — proteins important in helping the heart muscle contract — were elevated from a suspected heart attack during the wait.
Stacey told hospital staff she thought she might be having a heart attack, but they told her to “take a seat in the waiting room because they were very busy,” Sheri said.
“Had she been given a bed at that time, she likely would have survived,” Sheri Ross said at a news conference held outside the hospital on Tuesday.
Dr. Zoë Piggott, medical director of the hospital’s emergency room, told Stacey’s family in the meeting that hospital staff “missed” the 55-year-old’s suspected heart attack, Sheri said.
“She waited too long and the system failed her,” Sheri said. “When asked if this outcome could have been prevented, Dr. Piggott responded, ‘Yes, the wait killed her.'”
After getting sick from a virus before the December holidays, Ross went to the St. Boniface Hospital emergency room on Jan. 4 with chest pains and a frequent cough, but waited 12 hours before she was sent home without antibiotics, her family previously said.
She experienced the same chest pain while at work on Jan. 15 and was sent to St. Boniface Hospital via ambulance that morning.
Her oxygen levels dropped and she was put on life support shortly after being admitted to a room following an 11-hour wait.
Her official cause of death won’t be revealed until an autopsy is completed, likely in April, said Sheri. The critical incident review is expected to take up to 90 business days, she said.
“We believe a public investigation is necessary to determine what went wrong and where the failures occurred,” she said. “The current system is broken.”
The family of Stacey Ross stand outside St. Boniface Hospital on Tuesday, from left to right: daughter Morgan Ross, brother Benji Ross, and sister Sheri Ross. (Randall McKenzie/CBC)
Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said critical incident reviews are an entirely internal process.
“What we’d like to see is a public inquiry that would release recommendations to the public so that Manitobans know what’s going to change as a result of these tragedies so that it never happens again,” she said at the news conference.
Cook said a public inquiry is needed as Stacey Ross is among four people who died waiting for care at Winnipeg hospitals in recent months, which also includes Judy Burns, 68, six-month-old Luca Teng and Genevieve Price, 82.
An inquiry would also help identify where help is needed, which Cook suspects will include ER staff shortages, wait times and bed bottlenecks.
For an inquiry to happen, Premier Wab Kinew and Health Minister Asagwara would need to agree to it, Cook said.
“That’s a non-partisan issue,” she said. “We need an external investigation to understand what’s happening in our ERs and to restore some accountability to the system.”
Asagwara said the province’s top priority is that the Rosses get answers to all of their questions about Stacey’s death.
“I have given direction to St. Boniface to ensure that an external, out-of-province expert is brought into this [critical incident investigation] to ensure that the family’s concerns are addressed,” Asagwara said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday.
“The key findings and the recommendations from the critical incident investigation will be made public, with the support of the family.”
Morgan Ross, Stacey’s daughter, said her mother’s demeanor changed once she got sick, and everyone who knew her could tell something was wrong.
“If so many of us could sense that something was terribly wrong, why couldn’t a doctor or nurse?” Morgan asked at the news conference.
Her mother spent her final hours in pain, being overlooked and “silently wondering what she could say or do” to get the help she needed, Morgan said.
‘She wanted to live’
“I am 19 years old, and due to the Canada health-care system, I have no mother to guide me, to watch me grow, to see my accomplishments,” she said.
“My mother was taken from me — she wanted to live.”
Benji Ross, Stacey’s brother, said his sister didn’t have to die, and her death has “forever changed” her family.
Manitoba’s health-care system is “so overwhelmed now that it is a monumental task to rebuild it,” he said.
Kinew, Asagwara, Manitoba Progressive Conservatives and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal federal government “need to work together on this,” Benji Ross said.
“Finger pointing, consistently blaming the past and present leaders is not serving any purpose now,” he said.
“The bottom line is 12-hour wait times in the ER are a death sentence, and that is unacceptable.”