Woman dies after 3 days in Gatineau ER

The death of a woman in the emergency ward of a western Quebec hospital is being investigated by health authorities.

The psychiatric patient spent three days on a stretcher in the ward of the Hull hospital in Gatineau, Que., before she died on the weekend of Feb. 10, the hospital confirmed Wednesday.

She could notbe givena bed on another floor until she was seen by a general practitioner, and that never happened, the hospital said.

Five years ago,Gatineau's emergency doctors decidedthat each would nottake under their care in a single day more than five emergency patients without a family doctor— patients who are referred to as "orphan" patients.

But Denis St-Jean, a spokesman for the Centre de santé et des services sociaux de Gatineau, which runs the city's hospitals, would not comment on whether the quotas were a factor in the woman's death while the investigation is under way.

'She was not left on her own'

St-Jean said the patient who died was well cared for even though she did not see a general practitioner.

"I'd like to specify that this person, even though she spent two or three days in the emergency ward, was under the care of an emergency specialist and a professional team and she was not left on her own," he told CBC's French-language service Radio-Canada in French.

Heagreed that there is a shortage in hospital emergency wards of general practitioners. But he added that health authorities have been trying to work with doctors to solve the problem for years, and some general practitioners have already agreed to take a higher number of orphan patients.

"What causes problems in the emergency ward is that while these orphan patients are in the emergency ward, they come under the responsibility of the emergency doctors, who are themselves very, very, very busy," St-Jean said.

Emergency wards are regularly overflowing with numbers of patients far beyond their official capacities at both Hull and Gatineau hospitals, health authorities say.