\u201cThe crisis has deepened,\u201d Dr. Louis Perrault, president of the Association des chirurgiens cardio-vasculaires et thoraciques du Qu\u00e9bec, said in an interview Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would think that Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec would invest a little bit to get accurate data on wait lists. They manipulated stuff before, when they said that there are fewer patients waiting more than one year for other kinds of surgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n
In what appears to be a coincidence, the heart-surgery stats on Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s dashboard started falling soon after The Gazette published an expos\u00e9<\/a> last summer on a rising number of heart patients who died suddenly while on wait lists. <\/p>\n Asked whether he thought the public was being gaslit by the rosier stats, Perrault responded: \u201cWell, obviously when I\u2019m dealing with them I\u2019m trying not to be too paranoid, but it looks like it, because it doesn\u2019t make sense that the wait times were critical before and now they don\u2019t even care if some centres don\u2019t even enter the figures in the database.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor clinicians, it\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d Perrault added. \u201cThere should be a law, it should be compulsory that the different hospitals have complete, thorough and immediately up-to-date wait lists. In the first design of this dashboard, I wanted it to be live, like up-to-the-minute, day-to-day. You operate on a patient, the wait list goes down by one person, like it is in New Brunswick and Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tDub\u00e9\u2019s dashboard\t<\/p>\n The dashboard was the brainchild of former health minister Christian Dub\u00e9<\/a>, a self-described \u201cnumbers guy\u201d who wanted to keep better track of Quebec\u2019s medical system. At the same time, Dub\u00e9 touted the dashboard as an example of greater government transparency.<\/p>\n With little fanfare, Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec assumed control of the dashboard on Feb. 17. The Crown corporation was established in December 2024 with the mandate to run Quebec\u2019s $66.8-billion health and social services network more efficiently. But critics have charged that Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec, under chief executive officer Genevi\u00e8ve Biron, has been less transparent with the public than the Health Ministry.<\/p>\n Dr. Bernard Cantin, president of the Association des cardiologues du Qu\u00e9bec, shared Perrault\u2019s skepticism regarding the missing data for heart operations.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to face the problem, just ignore it,\u201d Cantin said, suggesting budget cuts may also be behind the lack of complete data.<\/p>\n \u201cSant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec is asking us to cut the budgets and so they\u2019re cutting in different places,\u201d Cantin explained.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Institut de cardiologie de Montr\u00e9al (ICM) was not immediately able to provide The Gazette with its figures on the latest surgical wait times.<\/p>\n \t\tSant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s explanation\t<\/p>\n We don’t hear from them. It’s radio silence. We don’t know who’s in charge (at Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec).<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tDr. Louis Perrault An official with Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec first advised a reporter to contact the ICM, but on Monday evening she emailed a statement explaining the reasons for the missing numbers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe drop in requests (for heart surgery) is due to the ramping down of data from the SGAS information system to SIMASS (Op\u00e9ra),\u201d Perrault lamented the backlog of heart surgeries in Quebec, noting that five patients died suddenly while on wait lists at the ICM last year. He blamed lengthy wait times on a severe shortage of perfusionists, the professionals who run the heart-and-lung machines necessary for coronary bypass operations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes me very sad and disappointed about our system, and a little bit frantic because it\u2019s so frustrating when you cannot get access to the people who will decide the fate of patients,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a G7 nation, we have the operating rooms, we have the doctors, sometimes we don\u2019t have the nurses. We clearly don\u2019t have the perfusionists, but we have the treatment. And yet people are dying because they don\u2019t get access to the health system. It\u2019s maddening. It\u2019s actually frightening. And now we\u2019re blind as to the extent of the problem because we don\u2019t have all the data.\u201d<\/p>\n Perrault also blasted Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec for showing scant interest in working with heart surgeons and cardiologists to reduce the backlog.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t hear from them. It\u2019s radio silence. We don\u2019t know who\u2019s in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Surgeons](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Par7704955.jpg\")
Heart-surgery stats on Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s dashboard started falling soon after The Gazette published an expos\u00e9<\/a> last summer. JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD\/AFP\/Getty Images JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Heart](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Heart-surgery-chart.jpg\")
Source: Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAssociation des chirurgiens cardio-vasculaires et thoraciques du Qu\u00e9bec<\/p>\n
Genevi\u00e8ve Bettez said in her email without elaborating on the two systems. \u201cAs a result, the ICM is not transmitting its information to the centralized systems. System adjustments are underway. Once the corrections are implemented, the data will be displayed retroactively.\u201d<\/p>\n