Toronto Public Health needs to warn public about bad clinics: Editorial

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario should post inspection results of private clinics on its website.

Toronto Public Health should post inspection results of private clinics on its website. 

Published on Mon Sep 22 2014

 

People’s lives were at stake, never mind their health.

But you wouldn’t know it by the outrageously secretive attitude exhibited by both Toronto Public Health and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Their lack of reporting and openness about a private clinic where a bacterial outbreak made several patients severely ill is breathtaking.

The Star’s Theresa Boylestory has just reported on the severe health effects two patients now live with after they received spinal injections at the Rothbart Centre for Pain Care in North York.

Anne Levac’s and Tracey Martin’s disabilities were caused by permanent nerve damage from bacterial infections that developed in their spines after the procedures. The disabilities have left them both incontinent and in severe pain.

In all, Boyle’s investigation found that nine patients were infected with bacteria at the clinic between August and November 2012.

But despite the threat to patients’ health, in a web of secrecy that is mind-boggling when lives are at stake, the following occurred:

The clinic’s doctors did not inform patients about the outbreak, as the College of Physicians requires.

Toronto Public Health did not post its inspection results online so doctors could assess whether they should recommend the clinic to patients, never mind so the patients themselves could be fully informed.

Toronto Public Health went so far as to make Levac go through an expensive, complicated freedom of information request in an attempt to find out she had been infected at the clinic.

Since the outbreak, the college posted online only that the clinic passed three inspections “with conditions” and a fourth without. It did not say there had been an outbreak, that nine patients became ill or that there were 170 inspection-control deficiencies at the clinic.

Ironically Toronto Public Health posts the results of inspection results online for restaurants, tattoo parlours and nail salons. But it does not feel it necessary to post results for clinics.

The lack of regard for patients from all levels involved in this health care disaster is symptomatic of what can only be considered a minefield of secrecy in Canada’s health care system, in general, that starts at the top with Health Canada, as recent Star investigations have demonstrated.

Only by putting patients’ interests first and foremost and being as transparent as possible can our health agencies protect consumers. Nothing less should be acceptable.

Source: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/09/22/toronto_public_health_needs_to_warn_public_about_bad_clinics_editorial.html