Daughter fights to keep mom in Winnipeg hospital

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This article was published 06/01/2023 (1021 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A daughter is fighting to keep her mother in a Winnipeg hospital after learning she would be transferred to a facility nearly 150 kilometres away.

Lisa Grayson’s mother, 79-year-old June Grayson, went to the Stonewall hospital on Dec. 30 after she fell and broke her hip. On Jan. 1, she was transferred to Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, where she received a hip replacement.

On Tuesday, Lisa and her family, who live in Stonewall, were told June would be sent to the E.M. Crowe Memorial Hospital in Eriksdale because the bed at Grace was needed for another patient. June was expected to be moved to Eriksdale on Thursday.

“I was furious and terrified. I thought, ‘You’re sending my mom up to Eriksdale to die,’” she said. “That’s what I thought.”

Lisa said her mother is in poor health and suffers from dementia and ICU psychosis, a condition that sends people in an intensive care unit into a prolonged state of delirium that can include hallucinations and aggressive behaviour.

Doctors have recommended June be close to family or her mental deterioration will worsen, Lisa said.

The Grace is a 20-minute drive from Stonewall, while Eriksdale is more than an hour away via Highway 6, which creates significant challenges for her and her elderly father, Lisa said.

“It’s just so far away when (mom’s) delirious, and she needs family there. Driving an hour and a half each way isn’t going to cut it if it’s an emergency situation, or at any time, because she needs that familiarity,” she said.

Lisa took the week off work to be with her mother, but she will have to return soon. With no release date in sight for her mother, she’s not sure how the family will cope.

The transfer is a symptom of a failing health-care system, Lisa said.

“It’s definitely a government problem, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “I have friends and family in health care, and they all say that this system is totally broken.”

The total number of beds in Winnipeg hospitals dropped to 3,024 in 2022 from 3,160 in 2017, as per annual reports from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Health Sciences Centre. Staffing shortages and resulting bed closures have plagued city hospitals.

In total, 185 patients were moved to a hospital outside of their health region in 2022, but just three were in the last six months of the year.

A spokesperson for the WRHA said it’s common practice to move patients into their own health region from Winnipeg to get them closer to home and free up beds.

While June lives in the Interlake-Eastern health authority catchment area, her daughter said the protocol doesn’t work for her family.

The WRHA spokesperson said Grace Hospital staff would work with the Grayson family to ensure that if a bed opens closer to Stonewall, June would have priority.

“In this instance, we can confirm that staff at Grace Hospital are working with Interlake-Eastern RHA officials to check inpatient bed availability at sites closer to the patient’s home community,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“In the meantime, staff and family have tentatively agreed to move the patient to E.M. Crowe Hospital in Eriksdale to continue their recovery with the understanding this individual will be prioritized for transfer to one of these sites when a bed does come free.”

In November, the provincial government announced a $200-million plan to recruit and train 2,000 health care workers to address the shortage.

Lisa said the issue goes beyond politics.

In 2015, under the NDP, she had the same fight when her mother had surgery at Health Sciences Centre and was scheduled to be transferred to the hospital in Arborg — a longer drive than from Stonewall to Winnipeg.

“I just find it all very depressing,” she said. “I find that everywhere you turn, it really doesn’t matter even who’s in office, it seems that it’s always the same BS.”

She fought that time too, and her mother was never sent to Arborg. She hopes the hospital will reconsider the transfer this time.

“We’ve dug in our heels before with my mom at HSC,” she said. “I’ll do everything in my power to do the same thing for her at Grace.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca