Emmanuel Macarine thought Sept. 20 was going to be a good day.
It’s the birthday of his late mother, Candida Macarine, who died at the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire in 2021.
So when he got a coroner’s report into her death on her birthday, he was relieved at first.
“I thought finally I could go to her grave and say ‘mom, we finally have answers for you,'” he told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.
However, when he read the report, he said, he became angry, as it contained “more questions than answers.”
Read more: Health officials accept family’s demand as coroner to probe woman’s death in Montreal hospital
When it was confirmed last year that his 86-year-old mother was found dead on the floor in a room hospital staff had already flagged over
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problems they had monitoring patients, the family demanded answers and a coroner’s investigation.
More than a year later, they’re still not satisfied.
“I say there’s a lot of holes in this coroner’s report,” Macarine stated, “and we ask the chief coroner to open a new investigation.”
A key question they want answered is why the senior was placed in a room where it was difficult to monitor a patient, given her condition.
“The coroner did not mention anything about that,” observed Fo Niemi, director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), a civil rights group helping the family. “That is one of the core complaints, that she was placed way down the line of priority and visual attention, and that setup has been criticized by staff in previous occasions.”
Read more: Quebec investigating allegations of mistreatment, negligence at Montreal long-term care homes
In her report coroner Amélie Lavigne wrote that there was a 24-hour nursing station alert system available to monitor the patient’s condition.
On page four she wrote, “according to the information gathered, it seems that the staff did not notice or hear the alarm at the nursing station during the event.”
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“The coroner did not say whether there was any nurse on duty or why nobody heard and saw that alarm,” Niemi criticized.
He also noted an unexplained discrepancy in which the doctor’s notes obtained by the family say that Candida’s body was found at 2:45 a.m., which contradicts the coroner’s finding which claims the body was discovered at 2:30 a.m.
The family acknowledges that the mother’s condition was poor –she was admitted to the emergency following signs of respiratory distress.
Still, they wonder if she would’ve survived had staff seen her on the floor earlier.
A representative from the coroner’s office said the family can contact chief coroner Pascale Descary with their concerns.
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