Sask. health minister asks regulatory bodies to investigate controversial facility after CBC report
CBC
Saskatchewan’s Health Minister says his government has asked the organization that regulates doctors and the treasury crown tasked with protecting consumers to investigate concerns raised in a recent CBC investigation of a controversial health centre in Moose Jaw.
He made those comments after being questioned by the provincial NDP about that story in the legislature.
That facility, the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center, has claimed it has a 100 per cent success rate in halting and reversing the progress of ALS — a degenerative disease that causes gradual muscle loss. The centre is run by Dayan Goodenowe, who is not a medical doctor.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan, deputy minister of health Tracey Smith wrote, “The ministry is concerned about this individual and private business engaging in what appears to be the unauthorized practice of medicine.”
“The ministry is very concerned about the harm this may be causing patients and others in Saskatchewan,” Smith wrote.
As a result, the ministry wants the college to “take all appropriate steps, including opening a formal investigation into the centre.”
The government is calling for this action after a CBC story earlier this week about 70-year-old Susie Silvestri. Last year, the American put her North Carolina home up for sale so she could afford to take part in the centre’s three-month live-in program, believing that Goodenowe’s supplements would enable her to walk again.
During her stay last fall, her health deteriorated. She ended up being forced to flee the province in a rented ambulance, with borrowed medical equipment, so she could get life-saving surgery in the United States that her insurance company wouldn’t pay for in Canada.
Silvestri died alone in a Montana hospital on Dec. 26, 2024, just four months after paying the Goodenowe centre $84,000 USD.
Susie’s situation is reminiscent of the stories shared by other Goodenowe clients in an earlier CBC story. Dayan Goodenowe, the man who runs the facility, has questioned those reports and filed a lawsuit against CBC claiming its coverage of his program is defamatory.
In an email to Goodenowe and his company, CBC outlined the concerns raised in the recent story about Susie Silvestri and asked for comment. In reply, Goodenowe's lawyer wrote, "No comment. We don't talk to people we are in active litigation against."
CBC asked Goodenowe for comment about this story and he has not replied.
The health minister has asked the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan to probe concerns about the Goodenowe centre. It is a treasury crown corporation responsible for protecting consumers in the province.
“Given the fact that dollars changed hands and concern that the services being offered I guess by this private business may not have been accurate to the way that they were represented to the customer, we’ll also be directing the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority to take a look at this specific situation and this specific business,” Cockrill told the media in the legislature Monday.
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