Trauma surgery delay highlights health-care system woes: patient

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This article was published 09/05/2023 (1207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A week after being seriously hurt in a car crash, a Winnipeg man is still waiting for surgery amid hospital and ambulance delays.

“I feel lucky to be alive, and I really want to start healing and getting past this,” said Zach Fleisher.

He’s been on a will-call list for surgery since May 2, and is required to fast daily on a 16-hour cycle from midnight to 4 p.m., in case he can get into surgery last-minute.

Until then, he’s waiting at home on painkillers.

On Tuesday afternoon, a full week after the crash, Fleisher was informed a surgery would be scheduled for Friday.

“You should just be able to book someone in for surgery. You shouldn’t have people on the will-call for days or even weeks,” he said.

The crash happened the morning of May 2, outside of Austin, as Fleisher was driving to Brandon for work.

He was taken by ambulance to hospital in Portage la Prairie, and assessed as needing surgery on his broken arm by an orthopedic surgeon at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.

However, there was a 15-hour wait for an ambulance to take him to Winnipeg. Fleisher said he was given the option of waiting or being discharged from hospital and having his partner drive him to HSC, where he expected to be prioritized for surgery as a trauma patient.

Instead, Fleisher said he waited seven hours in HSC’s emergency department — 3 1/2 hours passed before he was put into a bed — without being given any pain medication or any place to rest his arm, which has a Galeazzi fracture.

On Tuesday, Shared Health stated there was increased demand for urgent surgeries over the weekend and confirmed the patient declined inter-hospital transport in this case.

Meantime, Fleisher said he had to provide a paper copy of his hospital records from Portage, and was ultimately sent home to wait for surgery.

An attending physician told him he may have to wait a few weeks for surgery because of the many people ahead of him on the wait list, Fleisher said.

The experience has been “exhausting having to try to navigate this” as a patient, and has opened his eyes to the state of the health-care system, Fleisher said.

“I don’t fault any of the staff. Seeing first hand what they’re dealing with, our health-care system is an absolute mess. And I think that anyone who says that they have it under control or that things aren’t in dire circumstances is frankly delusional at this point.”

It’s clear there is a serious lack of staff and not enough capacity, he added.

“It’s a disaster. I can’t believe that we’ve allowed the system to deteriorate to this point, and there should be alarm bells going off for every single Manitoban on the state of our health-care system.”

A Shared Health spokesperson said privacy legislation prevents the agency from going into specifics.

“Generally speaking, patients who require an inter-facility transfer are assigned a transport based on the patient’s acuity and resource availability. In the event an emergent transport to another facility is needed, arrangements are made to safely transport the patient via ground or air,” the spokesperson stated.

“Surgeries for acute injuries are scheduled as soon as possible, with the most critical and urgent cases scheduled first. Over the weekend, we increased our orthopedic/trauma slates and brought in extra staff to meet the increased demand for urgent and emergent surgeries.

“Our patient relations team remains available to discuss any concerns the patient has about his experience.”

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com