Province to take over troubled Windsor hospital
December 13, 2010
Tanya Talaga
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
After years of controversy at a Windsor hospital ranging from the murder of a nurse to surgical errors and questionable pathology reports, the government says it will take over its leadership.
Health Minister Deb Matthews said Monday she will seek cabinet approval to appoint a supervisor at Windsor’s Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital within two weeks.
The move suspends the power of Hotel-Dieu’s board of directors and executives, as they will answer to a supervisor who then reports to Matthews.
The news comes on the heels of a multimillion breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by former vice-president Kim Spirou, who alleges she was pressured to cover up wrongdoings at the hospital by CEO Warren Chant.
Spirou was in charge of the hospital’s communications with the media during some recent “stressful and challenging” conditions, according to her statement of claim.
Those include Lori Dupont’s 2005 murder by anesthesiologist Marc Daniel, the suicides of various mental health patients who received treatment at the hospital, the conduct of a drunken emergency room doctor, the embezzlement of hospital funds, two mistaken mastectomies and the pathology crisis, the claim states.
Spirou is suing Chant and various members of the Hotel-Dieu staff.
Spirou’s claim states “in many instances, the plaintiff and the said defendant Warren Chant did not agree on the manner in which the hospital should deal with the media or public.”
It adds: “The plaintiff refused to comply with the said defendant’s request to make misleading statements or factually incorrect statements to the media.”
In a statement, Chant called the allegations in Spirou’s claim “scandalous and meritless.”
“Ms. Spirou’s employment was terminated by the hospital and she has sued for wrongful dismissal. In so doing she has elected, for reasons known only to her, to impugn the integrity of hospital staff and executives,” the statement read.
The appointment of a supervisor came at the suggestion of hospital staff after a sweeping probe examined the saga of medical errors at three Windsor-area hospitals.
Many of the incidents happened at Hotel-Dieu, where two women received mistaken mastectomies and pathologist Dr. Olive Williams was suspended after questions about her diagnoses of tissue samples. About 6,000 files handled by Williams since 2003 were re-examined by the provincial probe.
The province’s investigation was led by Ontario’s former chief coroner Dr. Barry McLellan. He said in a report released last August that Hotel-Dieu needed to put more effort into fostering better relationships between medical and hospital leadership and members of the board of directors.
Another recommendation was to appoint a facilitator to oversee needed changes. That role was given to Malcolm Maxwell, the chief executive officer of Kitchener’s Grand River Hospital.
Maxwell told the Star it was Hotel-Dieu’s idea to ask for a supervisor to help the hospital implement all the recommendations in the report.
“They looked at the task to be done and felt this was the reasonable way to go,” he said in an interview.
Progressive Conservative MPP Christine Elliott (Whitby-Oshawa) said it has taken the province too long to step in.
“Why did it take until now to have a supervisor appointed and what else is going on that the public has the right to know about?” she asked.
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