Scathing coroner's report spurs change at Montreal's McGill University Health Centre

Kimberly Gloade’s final visit to the Glen Superhospital lasted 23 minutes – enough time to establish she was in dire need of tests but that she did not have her Quebec health card and would be billed $1,400 to start, should she choose to stay.

The 43-year-old Mi’kmaq woman originally from the Burnt Church First Nation in New Brunswick left without knowing she was in the terminal phase of cirrhosis. Fifty days later, her skin jaundiced and abdomen distended from 10 litres of poisonous fluid, her boyfriend found her convulsing and choking. She died in bed.

… she should have expected “the minimal accompaniment in the face of death as demanded by decency and a society worthy of the name.” Coroner Ramsay.

Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre has announced changes to a series of policies on admissions and billing after a scathing coroner’s report that found the health system failed to deliver basic end-of-life care to Ms. Gloade.
Her death from cirrhosis due to long-term drug and alcohol addiction was inevitable, Coroner Jacques Ramsay wrote, but it is a case where she should have expected “the minimal accompaniment in the face of death as demanded by decency and a society worthy of the name.”
Read the full report at The Globe and Mail