Gramma gets a taxi ride

[maryjane48]

A family is coming forward today with what they say is another case of a senior being inappropriately discharged from a Metro Vancouver hospital.

Douglas Chidley said his 76-year-old mother, Hannah, was sent home alone in a taxi from Mount St. Joseph Hospital in east Vancouver on April 10, 2012, without his family's knowledge.

The allegations come on the heels of a CBC News report yesterday about legally blind Vivian Fitzpatrick, 90, who was sent home in a taxi from Delta Hospital at 2:30 a.m. PT without her clothes, shoes, and bleeding from her arm.

The day before the alleged incident at Mount St. Joseph in 2012, Hannah Chidley had been discharged after spending two weeks in hospital suffering from pneumonia and anemia.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... -1.1895080


i guess family first doesnt include gramma and grampa ?

[LoneWolf_53]

*rephrase without the insults/Jo*

[Tori_K]

Low hanging fruit.

From the article: After leaving the hospital, Douglas forgot to turn his cellphone back on, after having turned it off in the emergency room. <snip> Hospital staff told Chidley they had attempted to contact him, but could not reach him because his phone was off. <snip> In February of this year, the board found that communication between staff at the hospital was inadequate and recommended a review of their procedures.


Sounds like it's already a closed case - the family has already made their complaint and had a favourable ruling by officials on the matter and the recommendations were taken care of. If this was the Delta Hospital it would be a different matter but it's a hospital in a different city which correct me if I'm wrong, East Vancouver is in the jurisdiction of the Greater Vancouver Health Authority rather than the Fraser Heath Authority.

[flamingfingers]

I have no idea what these 'discharge protocols' are, but if they called for discharging an elderly person BY TAXI without getting in touch with a family member and ensuring a safe way to get home with a caregiver or family member to receive that person, the protocol must have been written by some uncaring bean counter who only considered cost as opposed to appropriate patient care.

Despicable.

[Donald G]

It would be interesting to know the actual sequence of events that CAUSED the elderly people to be discharged and sent on their way without a "turn over to" person being identified. At some point ONE INDIVIDUAL HOSPITAL EMPLOYEE has to have made the decision and played a primary role in putting each lady into the taxi. Saying it was a "breakdown in communication" is IMO a completely vague terminology aimed at "distributing the blame" to any number of employees ... and identifying none.