With ER hours cut, Quebec man dies after 2-hour wait for ambulance

A man in Senneterre, a town in Quebec's Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, has died after waiting two hours for an ambulance, after his local emergency room's service has been scaled back.

The town, located over 500 kilometres north-west of Montreal, announced the death Wednesday. Family later confirmed the man's identity as 65-year-old Richard Genest.

Marianne Genest, speaking to CBC News, said her father called for an ambulance around 2:40 a.m., after the town's emergency room had closed. Senneterre's ER has been operating only eight hours a day since mid-October due to lack of staff.

But the town's only ambulance was already en route to Val d'Or, nearly 70 kilometres away, with another patient. The man who died waited two hours for another ambulance, which had to come from the neighbouring town of Barraute.

He was then transported to the hospital in Val d'Or, where he was assessed by medical professionals, his daughter said. He then had to be transferred to the town of Amos, an hour away, where there was an emergency vascular surgeon on staff.

Genest died in the elevator, on his way to the operating table, around 10 a.m. — over seven hours after he first called for an ambulance, according to his daughter.

Senneterre mayor Nathalie-Anne Pelchat said the situation could have been avoided if the town was able to have a 24-hour emergency room. 

She said she reached out to the regional health authority before the death, asking it to reopen the emergency room as soon as possible. She said she also wrote to Quebec's health minister, Christian Dubé, asking him to intervene.

"We take it very personally. The whole community of Senneterre is really in shock," Pelchat told Radio-Canada. "We knew it was going to happen, we said it over and over again, no one believed us."

"We knew it was going to happen and, unfortunately, it happened."

Émilise Lessard-Therrien, a Québec Solidaire MNA who represents the region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue at the National Assembly, said she felt her region had been "abandoned" by the provincial government.

"We have a lot of questions about what happened. If the ambulance, if the paramedics were there ... if the paramedics went directly to Amos, to the [right] specialist, maybe Richard Genest would be still alive."

Marianne Genest said that it was definitely a problem, not only in Senneterre, but in small towns across the province.

"Every city should have a 24-hour emergency, or something, because we're human beings," she said. "You can't just leave us like this."