A step to prevent avoidable deaths

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/03/2025 (236 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In July of last year, Niverville resident Debbie Fewster was told by her doctor that he was concerned about her heart. A stress test was conducted weeks later and an echocardiogram conducted on Aug. 22 revealed extreme blockages that required triple bypass surgery. She was told by a cardiac specialist that she required surgery within three weeks.

In September, a nurse said that surgery at St. Boniface Hospital likely wouldn’t happen that month because the facility was “catching up” after summer holidays. Fewster was still waiting for a surgery when she died on Oct. 13.

Based on what happened to Fewster, her family has joined a public policy think-tank named Second Street to demand legislation — “Debbie’s Law” — that would require health authorities to inform patients when they are unable to provide life-saving treatment in Manitoba within the recommended period, and to discuss options for care outside of the province.

The provision of that information to patients would enable them and their families to make informed decisions as to the next steps they should take. Fewster’s family says they would have considered surgical options outside of Manitoba if they had been told that Debbie was facing a long, unsafe wait time for her surgery.

It is easy to regard Debbie’s case as a tragic, exceptional event that does not reflect the true state of health care in Manitoba, given that the median wait time for all heart surgeries was 12 days in December, according to the Manitoba government’s online dashboard.

The median wait time was even lower — 10 days — for emergent and urgent (Priority 1) patients, who cannot be discharged from hospital before surgery. For semi-urgent (Priority 2) patients — defined as those with significant heart problems who could deteriorate if they wait too long — the median wait was 27 days. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, half of all patients in Manitoba waited just 11 days before undergoing a bypass operation in 2023.

Those numbers suggest that cardiac patients in Manitoba are getting the care they need when they need it, but the hard reality is that Debbie didn’t get the surgery she needed, at the cost of her life — and she may not be the only victim of similar circumstances.

A report released by Second Street two months ago suggests that nearly 15,000 Canadians died during the 2023-24 fiscal year while waiting for surgeries. The organization says it has identified almost 75,000 cases where patients died waiting for various surgeries and diagnostic scans since the 2018-19 fiscal year. Even more worrying, it says the number is likely much higher because many jurisdictions, including Manitoba, do not currently track those deaths.

If that is the case — and there is no reason to believe that it isn’t — the problem is far more serious than most Canadians realize, demanding a solution that goes beyond the legislation called for by Debbie’s family.

Requiring health authorities to inform patients when they can’t provide timely life-saving care is an obvious and necessary measure, but so too is a centralized surgical wait time management process that ensures that patients get the surgery they need on a timely basis.

The implementation of such a system began in Winnipeg last summer, and in rural areas of the province last fall. It requires surgeons seeking to reserve operating room time to submit their respective patients’ information to a central wait time information system, in order to make sure patients with the most urgent needs receive priority care.

While such a system is intended to prevent what happened to patients like Debbie, we note that its implementation began in Winnipeg before she died. Given that reality, it is fair to ask why a central surgical wait time database was not implemented long ago, given the clear and longstanding need for such a system, combined with the dire consequences that occur when cases like Debbie’s fall through the cracks.

It causes us to wonder how many other Debbies have occurred over the years because such a database did not exist.

The passage of Debbie’s Law may save lives in the future and, for that reason, should receive the unanimous support of all parties in the legislature. It should be just one step, however, in ensuring that what happened to Debbie never happens to another Manitoban.