The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Ron Radics has a hard enough time talking about his wife's passing without a television camera focused on his face. But the Flin Flon area retiree was willing to work through the discomfort for last week's CBC News series on concerns with local health care. 'It was kind of heart-wrenching,' Radics tells The Reminder. Radics' wife Gail died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the spring of 2010. This type of cancer is often curable, but she tragically learned of her disease too late. That's because Radics says she was misdiagnosed with a rare blood disorder for which she was given blood transfusions and medication. 'I pleaded with some of the doctors here to send her out (for testing),' he says. 'It's unfair.' Higher standard Radics says Flin Flon needs both doctors and medical facilities of a higher standard, saying things have 'deteriorated so bad' that he wonders whether they are fixable. He was one of five residents to detail accounts of misdiagnoses for the three-part CBC series, which aired province-wide last week on TV and radio. See 'CEO' on pg. Continued from pg. 'Flin Flon as a community shouldn't have to suffer like that,' says Radics, a retired Hudbay smelter worker. Helga Bryant, CEO of the Northern Health Region, says she wants to meet personally with Radics and the others who shared their stories with CBC. 'Our hearts go out to anyone who has suffered an injury or premature death as a result of anything that happened to them in a health care setting,' Bryant says. 'I am committed to learning from any situation where we have fallen short, regardless of when it was. We can always do better and I know our staff are committed to delivering the best care possible every day. It is my job to support and enable them in that regard and I remain committed to that task.' In addition to face-to-face meetings, Bryant has asked for each of the misdiagnosed patients' files to be reviewed to see if there is anything that can be learned. She also notes that an independent review of the Flin Flon and The Pas ERs will begin next month with a report expected by the end of the year. The review, Bryant says, had been in the works before the CBC report. It relates to a provincially ordered operational review of the now-defunct NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority that began in 2011. Not to be overlooked, Bryant says, is the fact that the Northern Health Region has 'made significant strides' in improving care. 'News stories like (CBC's) can appear to devalue those efforts and be very trying for the staff who work so hard to deliver on our promise of 'Healthy People in a Healthy North,'' she says. But it may take some time before all residents see real meaning in those words. As the CBC series noted, a number of area people feel more comfortable travelling to other communities for health care. This has in fact been the case for years. For Cameron Friesen, health critic for provincial opposition Progressive Conservatives, that's a 'red flag.' Friesen says further reviews are not the answer. He advocates a more effective approach to recruiting physicians to small-town Manitoba. What's not clear from the CBC report _ and what will probably never be known in a definitive way _ is whether the problem of misdiagnoses is worse in Flin Flon than anywhere else. A 2003 Canadian Institute for Health Information study found that nearly one in four Canadians reported that they or a family member had endured a preventable, adverse medical mistake. And according to TheRecord.com, a 2009 report on U.S. health care found that 28 per cent of 583 diagnostic mistakes reported anonymously by doctors had resulted in death or permanent disability, or were life-threatening. Such stats are cold comfort for Radics, though he welcomes the chance to meet with Bryant and is hopeful that such exchanges can help fix what he believes ails Flin Flon health care. '(It's a chance to) shed some light on it,' he says. 'Something has to give, really.'
