Blame Canada – Our Healthcare Kills
CANADA CARE MAY HAVE KILLED NATASHA
COULD actress Natasha Richardson‘s tragic death have been prevented if her skiing accident had occurred in America rather than Canada?
Canadian health care de-emphasizes widespread dissemination of technology like CT scanners and quick access to specialists like neurosurgeons. While all the facts of Richardson’s medical care haven’t been released, enough is known to pose questions with profound implications.
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma — a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.
Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.
April 6th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
A Great deal of time could have been saved, if Quebec had Air Ambulance like Ontario.
If she had gone with the paramedics at first, instead of her hotel, perhaps things would be different. but she insisted she was okay…Tragic.
April 6th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
This unfortunate lady is probably lucky that she died from the brain injury. Had she spent any time in a Canadian hospital she would would have probably contracted flesh eating disease or some other such terminal malady since our hospitals seem to have given up on sterilizing instruments so they can save enough money to pay the inflated salaries of the hordes of administrators and bureaucrats who infest our health care system.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:32 am
SHE rejected immediate response! She said “I am fine – no problem” or to that effect. If she had not dismissed the first response team, she might have been fine. Many people might do the same thing. Her family knows this or they would be litigating. Don’t blame our Health Care.
April 7th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Would she have received better care if she was a “local” from Quebec or if she spoke French?
April 7th, 2009 at 5:59 am
Ms Richardson refused to wear a helmet – though the hill operator encouraged her to do so;
she received immediate care on the slope within minutes of having her crash;
she was carried down, off the slope;
she refused to be taken via ambulance to a local hospital – that DOES have CT scan technology… prefering to go back to her room;
she waited a couple of hours before summoning help;
This is a free country and people can choose to do as they wish. Ms Richardson made some lousy decisions that day – but that is no reason to blame it on Canada.
April 7th, 2009 at 6:01 am
No!!!
Ms Richardson would have gotten the exact same attention if she had been “local” AND spoke french.
She refused medical services when it should have been done. Her decision to refuse service is at the root of her untimely demise
April 7th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Blaming a head injury victim for not having the “brains” to know she had sustained a possibly fatal injury is INSANE.
Natasha Richardson wasn’t responsible for her death. Period.
When the resort called for the ambulance around 3 pm and richardson was transported to the first, crummy hospital, she was responsive: talking in the ambulance, responding to questions. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened to her, clearly a sign of brain trauma, but she WAS responding and eminently savable at this point in time.
Forty-five minutes later, she arrived at Hospital #1, the crummy hospital with no neurologist, no surgeon and no one to read a CT scan if they even took a CT scan (the hospital isn’t saying.)
She sat in Crummy Hospital #1 for TWO HOURS, being “stabilized,” whatever that means, because what they didn’t do was do anything to relieve the pressure in her skull. When she was finally transported to the brain trauma center, Hospital #2, after sitting in Crummy Hospital #1 for two hours, and after another 45 minutes ambulance ride, her pupils were fixed and dialated. She was completely UNresponsive.
By the time she was taken to people who COULD have helped her, she was irreversibly brain damaged.
Why wasn’t she taken immediately to a hospital that had the professionals who could have treated her injuries? Why was she sent to a place that could do NOTHING for her, and stayed there for two hours?
Even if she was driven to Hospital #2, she still would’ve been there two hours sooner and two hours closer to the kind of doctors and surgeons who could’ve saved her life – with a relatively simple procedure, the drilling of a burr hole in her skull to relieve the pressure.
Whether that meant using a medivac or taking a brain injury patient to a brain injury center, no matter how she got there, it’s clear and apparent that it was the diversion to Crummy Hopsital #1, with no surgeons, no neurologists, and no specialists, and the long, long wait there, that took her life.
Who knows if the burr hole surgery would’ve saved her? From what I know, there’s an excellent chance she would have SURVIVED if the surgery had been performed in a timely manner, by people who knew what they were doing.
THOSE are the facts. Blaming the patient for her own death is disgusting and repulsive beyond measure!