WATCH: Kelowna family loses say for hospital stay

KELOWNA, BC: Most people would agree a hospital is the best place to be when you are seriously ill, but a Kelowna family disagrees.

When it comes to the care of their elderly father, they believe their wishes are being ignored.

The family says they are the best ones to take care of him, but the Interior Health Authority disagrees and came to remove him from his home of 45 years and take him to hospital Thursday.

“He was falling here and I was unable to look after him,” says Violet Millard, 79, of the reason nurses gave her for taking her husband away in an ambulance with police standing by. “They wanted him to be where he could be looked after.”

In fragile health due to cancer, Richard Millard, 80, had fallen down several times when he attempted to walk to the bathroom alone.

While his care has been assisted by nurses who visited the home in recent months, his wife, who is also in fragile health, was his primary caregiver. When she needed a break, the 80-year-old would go to his son’s house across town.

But Doug Millard’s house, where he lives with his wife and four children, has been deemed unsanitary and unsuitable for his elderly father by Interior Health.

Millard disputes their claim, seemingly unaware of his cluttered surroundings.

“I realize we’re not as clean as a lot of places, as hospital clean is. But what place is hospital clean?” says the 45 year-old-man, who is also wheelchair bound from MS.

Interior Health would not comment on the individual case involving Millard, but says they have the authority to remove adults from the home under the BC Adult Guardianship Act.

“Interior Health is the designated agency that would supply assistance to anybody deemed necessary as an adult that might be in neglect or in need of help,” says Andrew Hughes, Health Service Director for IHA. “We actually get quite a few calls in regards to people that are at risk and we have to go in to investigate every single one.”

The family wants their elder member back in their own care, seeing a hospital environment as a negative impact on his health.

“We need him and he needs us,” says the man’s son, emotional over IHA’s decision.

The man remains at Kelowna General Hospital receiving care for a neck wound sustained during a recent fall. His family was also told he may have pneumonia, but have not heard any confirmation of the diagnosis made by the nurses who ordered him taken to hospital.

Global Okanagan news was not permitted into KGH to ask the elder Millard where he wants to be for his care. An Interior Health spokesperson said the attending physician didn’t feel he could answer our question.