Patient airlifted to hospital out of province discharged with no money, ID

After two of his fingers were severed in a woodworking accident, Vic Germaniuk says he was left to make the 700-kilometre trip home from hospital with no money or identification.

Now the Ontario man has decided to Go Public after discovering he is not the only person who has been left stranded far from home by the health-care system.

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Germaniuk calls it a "stupid accident." On Oct. 14, 2013, his glove got caught in the blade of a saw while he worked on his rural Ontario property in Kaministiquia, outside Thunder Bay.

Two fingers on his left hand were cut off. 

"It was awful … you realize that, my body is now going to be changed for ever.… All this stuff goes through your head within seconds," Germaniuk said.

Despite the shock, he decided to look for his severed fingers in the grass. He found one.

Drove to Thunder Bay 

Germaniuk then drove 45 minutes to Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, arriving at the emergency department with a blood-soaked towel over his hand and carrying one finger in a plastic bag.

He said the medical care he received was excellent, but the decision was made to fly him almost 700 kilometres across the provincial border to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg for surgery.

As it turned out, surgeons there could not reattach the finger. But it's what happened the next day that convinced Germaniuk he should Go Public. 

Told to figure out how to get home 

"The nurse came into the room and said to me, 'How are you getting home?' I thought she was making a joke," he said. 

"I said, 'Lookit, I was working outside at my house yesterday and I had work clothes on. I had no wallet, I had no ID, I had no health card, I had nothing in my pants. [Now] here I am in Winnipeg, and you're asking me to go home. What am I to do?'

"And she said, 'It's up to you.'"

The Winnipeg hospital offered taxi fare to either the airport or a bus terminal.

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Germaniuk spent the next couple of hours on the phone convincing his credit company to allow him to charge a $98 Greyhound bus ticket for the 10-hour trip home.  

A stranger who was visiting the hospital and overheard his story gave Germaniuk $20 to buy food for the trip.

"I was traumatized first from the accident …  I was trying to deal with that, so to have the nurse say just get out of the hospital this afternoon … I was just devastated of course," he said.

After learning about Germaniuk's story through Go Public, Dr. Eric Hoskins, Ontario's health minister, said he is "very concerned" and has ordered his ministry to look into what went wrong. 

Ontario patients regularly left stranded

What happened to Germaniuk may seem unusual, but Natalie Mehra from the Ontario Health Coalition said patients are regularly left to make their own way home.

Mehra said part of the problem is that Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre regularly operates over capacity. 

It often has to fly patients to Manitoba or the U.S. for care they should be able to receive closer to home. 

"To be sending them off to another province or another country is a failure of our health-care system. It's shocking. This has happened for far too long," she said.  

"And to leave patients then, discharge them from the hospital with no way home but for them to figure it out, is just wrong," Mehra told Go Public.

A representative from the Thunder Bay hospital said this is not the case. 

In an email to Go Public, Chisholm Pothier said patients are not sent out of province because of capacity issues. He said Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre only transports patients to other hospitals when certain services are not available in Thunder Bay. 

"Reasons for acute hospital stays outside of northwestern Ontario include specialty services not available … or from seeking treatment while on vacation or working out of province," Pothier said.

Ontario travel grant 

Ontario offers a travel grant program to patients in the northern part of the province. But Mehra said patients are still left to find their own way home. Once home, they have to apply to get their money back.

Both Thunder Bay and Winnipeg hospital officials point to problems in the system.

"Most of the questions, in fact, even the patient's complaint, refer to flaws and policy gaps in the system," said Pothier.

According to Pothier, last year 1,146 patients were treated outside the region. More than 300 were treated in Manitoba or other provinces. But he said the vast majority, 91 per cent, were treated at the Thunder Bay hospital. 

Not a benefit under Canada Health Act

Melissa Hoft with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said patient travel policies are set by provincial health ministries, not by individual hospitals, and differ from province to province. 

"Transportation home from a hospital after being discharged is not an insured benefit under the Canada Health Act," she said. 

Because Germaniuk is not a Manitoba resident, it was up to Ontario to get him home.

Ontario's Ministry of Health told Go Public there is a system in place to get patients who have been shipped out of province for medical care home again.

The ambulance service can be used, but only if a doctor decides it is medically necessary.  

"However, for repatriation purposes, where a physician does not determine that transport by ambulance is medically necessary according to the criteria listed in the Ambulance Act, ambulance transport is not provided," Joanne Woodward Fraser from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care told Go Public in an email.

More than a year later, Germaniuk is still relearning how to do some basic tasks. That all makes sense, he said. But he's still baffled as to why he was left stranded so far from home by the medical system. 

"It's totally bizarre… I don't think it would be a huge money issue to resolve this problem.

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