Alberta emergency doctors compile list of what they say are 6 potentially preventable ER deaths

Alberta emergency room doctors have counted what they say are six potentially preventable deaths and numerous close calls for patients who they say waited too long for care in emergency rooms across the province.

Dr. Paul Parks, a Medicine Hat ER physician and past president of the Alberta Medical Association (AMA), says he and his emergency medicine colleagues compiled the list of cases that they say occurred over a two-week period in late December and early January.

CBC News obtained the document listing the cases from multiple sources. Parks confirmed it was authentic and said he had sent it to provincial government and health officials on Jan. 11 in a bid to get more help for the stressed system. Parks did not provide the document to CBC News.

It feels “horrendous” to watch patients suffer while health-care workers lack adequate staff or hospital space to help them, Parks said in an interview on Monday.

“I've been here 25 years and never seen it this bad,” he said, adding that he believes the cases his colleagues enumerated are the "tip of the iceberg."

Parks said emergency doctors across the province began collecting examples of cases where they say they believe patients were harmed by delayed access to care after a 44-year-old man died in the emergency room at Edmonton's Grey Nuns Community Hospital last month. Prashant Sreekumar's family says he had waited nearly eight hours to see a doctor about his chest pain. The provincial government has since ordered a fatality inquiry to look into the death.

Although Sreekumar’s family has been vocal about their experience, Parks said similar scenarios are playing out in emergency departments across the province without as much public attention.

Dr. Scott MacLean, an emergency physician working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and Northeast Community Health Centre in Edmonton, said he believes the list likely underestimates patients who are in worse shape due to ER wait times.

An Acute Care Alberta spokesperson said they won’t comment on any of the cases compiled by doctors due to patient privacy concerns.

There are no dates or locations provided for each incident in the document sent to provincial officials in order to protect patients’ privacy, Parks said.

Among the six deaths doctors recorded was a middle-aged man with chest pain who they allege spent eight hours in an emergency waiting room before a bed was available. They say the patient was agitated, his heart stopped and staff couldn’t save him.

“This case should be very alarming, as it is exactly like the very tragic and very public case of the death at [the Grey Nuns emergency department] recently,” the document says.

The doctors allege another man in his 50s died from multi-organ failure caused by a bacterial blood infection. They said he waited in an urban ER for at least seven hours without being seen, and then left. EMS brought him in a few hours later in dire condition, they say.

A female patient who the doctors say waited too long for emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction and perforation died of organ failure 24 hours later, the doctors allege. They also allege that people who kept showing up at the ER more critically ill delayed a doctor from getting to her.