A B.C. senior is sounding the alarm about rural health care after she was discharged from hospital at night with no way to get home.
Janis Hart, 77, fainted and went into convulsions at her home in Clearwater on Tuesday night. She was rushed to the local hospital and then transferred to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
Hart said she was diagnosed with swelling of the brain and given a prescription before being discharged around 9 p.m. Wednesday.
By that time, it was dark out and Hart said her husband isn’t able to drive safely at night. Hospital staff made no arrangements for her to make it the 120 kilometres home, she said.
“I was a bit beside myself … I was told by the paramedics they would arrange transport for me to get home, somebody would, and (the nurse) said, ‘No, we don’t do that, that’s not a possibility, end of subject,'” she said.
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“I think it would have been the responsibility of the hospital to make sure I was released to someone safely who actually came and picked me up because of (what) my symptoms were. I was dizzy.”
Hart was eventually able to contact a friend who lives in Kamloops, who offered to let her spend the night at their house.
According to the Interior Health website, it is a patient’s responsibility to arrange transportation home, even if they arrive at a hospital via emergency transport.
The B.C. Rural Health Network told Global News that’s not acceptable, given that patients in rural communities already face barriers when accessing care.
“It’s their responsibility, the patient is in their care. You cannot discharge somebody into an unsafe environment,” Rural Health Network executive director Paul Adams said.
“If you are living hours away from the centre you have been transferred to for emergency care and they discharge you, the onus should not be on the individual to find their way home. We really need to protect these people within the system.”
In response to questions about Hart’s case, Interior Health released a statement saying there are provisions for getting vulnerable patients home.
Those include taxi vouchers, and in some cases, hotels, it said.
The health authority apologized for Hart’s experience and said it was reaching out to her to find out what happened.
Health Minister Adrian Dix promised a full review of Hart’s discharge.
“Of course there’s going be a review when circumstances don’t go well for whatever reason, so we’re going to look into that,” Dix said Thursday.
Hart said the staff who treated her both in Clearwater and Kamloops were amazing and provided clear explanations about her health status.
But she said her discharge experience has left her questioning the state of the health-care system itself.
“It was traumatic,” she said.
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