Posted on 03/20/2009 4:04:53 PM PDT by devere
It seems that there was no neurosurgeon at the local hospital, and no medical helicopter in the entire province of Quebec, so once she fell poor Natasha was doomed, even if she had asked for immediate medical assistance. It seems almost unbelievable in the 21st century, but that's what socialized medicine brings you. Death.
I'm not angry. I'm just a forceful debater. ;-)
But, I must admit, I AM angry at political budget bean counters that have deprived an entire province in a First World country of a basic medical tool in the 21st Century.
Maybe their names were not famous enough to get in the newspapers outside of Quebec, but I can guarantee you that many lives in rural communities in Quebec were sacrificed because of this decision. After practicing radiology, hand in hand with the ER, in a rural hospital for over 20 years, I can only imagine how many of our own neighbors would have died unnecessarily if such a decision had been imposed here.
It's an inexcusable political decision that, as the head of trauma at McGill University Medical Centre said, is analogous to not having a Fire Department in a town.
Who in the world would have googled it? Mrs. Neeson was disoriented/confused, if not unconscious. Her children would not have thought of it. Mr. Neeson was likely en route and unaware that a world- class city like Montreal would be lacking such things. Time was of the essence. Time ran out.
This woman had no one to advocate for her. It’s a real shame.
I have been a registered nurse in the U.S. for 23 years, thirteen of those in Critical Care.
One of the things that I am proudest of is that I have been the advocate for my patients when they couldn’t be for themselves.
Mrs. Neeson does bear the responsibility for her initial injury.
She should have been wearing a helmet.
She should have accepted medical treatment post injury, but it is possible she wasn’t thinking entirely clearly and at the time no one was aware of that.
It happens a lot, then later on the confusion is very obvious.
Quebec bears a huge burden of responsibility for having a system in which those in the know were prohibited from calling a private air ambulance when time was critical.
In a world class city. With a big fancy baseball team.
In your healthcare system, no one was willing or able to be her advocate.
Maybe because they figured it ws her fault she got hurt.
Mrs. AV
I would expect the resort staff, or members of her own entourage could have done that if any of them thought it was necessary.
Everybody 'googles' for the latest information. It took me 2 mins to find this service....
-------------------------------------------
Air Ambulance services save lives by providing organs, equipment, and resources to people in need. Bookajet.ca offers medical evacuation and transportation services affordably, efficiently, and expediently 24 hours a day.
BookaJet.ca provides expert aeromedical care by ensuring careful pre-flight preparations, offering a consistent transport process, full accountability, comfortable and safe traveling amenities. On board, our highly trained personnel include flight paramedics, flight physicians, flight EMT II, and ACLS registered nurses who can provide critical patient care.
Our operations team consists of professional staff trained to provide the best care tailored to specific needs of patients, including selecting the best aircraft for the patient depending upon their health condition such as an economical jet prop aircraft or a jet in medical evacuation that requires immediate transport.
Our aircraft can handle different weather conditions and can be configured for each patient’s individual needs.
Equipment on board includes medical grade oxygen, drug kits, cardiac monitors, defibrillators, intravenous pumps, intravenous administration sets, onboard suction, emergency cardiac drugs, and other specialized medical equipment.
BookaJet.ca has a medical director on board all aeromedical flights who determines the appropriate personnel and equipment for the patient after consultation with the patient’s physician.
---------------------------------------
The point is that IF she has sought medical attention immediately, she might have survived, but she didn't.
I don't quite follow that statement.
In the First World, in the 21st Century, some things are simply "Standard of Care" for people within far more than a 75 mile radius around the "Big City".
It is true that patients do dumb things to get themselves in deep trouble but that is no excuse not to be up to the Standards of Care.
In 1889, a horse drawn wagon was standard of care to serve a mountain community 75 miles away from the "Big City".
In 1949, a motorized ambulance was standard of care to serve a mountain community 75 miles away from the "Big City" when patients with time-critical injuries were involved.
In 2009, a helicopter medevac service has been standard of care to serve a mountain community 75 miles away from the "Big City" when patients with time-critical injuries were involved. It has been so for many, many years.
This is a shocking deviation from Standard of Care and it is not a "Canada Failure". It is a "Province of Quebec Failure".
Even Nova Scotia has paid out the money to join the 21st Century.
However, we know the Quebec government has been looking at the issue and one would suppose the availability of helicopter evacuation from other areas has been a problem. Or maybe it hasn't . We don't know.
For a town 75 miles away from the Big City, helicopters are not stationed at such a town. They are dispatched FROM the Big City, pick up, then return TO the Big City.
Just like UPS.
Unless this town was surrounded by surface to air missiles operated by the Taliban, there is simply nothing to "look at" except to "look at" the willingness to pay for 21st Century First World medicine Standard of Care.
You take off from Montreal, fly 75 miles north, land, load, take off, fly 75 miles south to Montreal, land, off-load. Simple as that.
There is absolutely nothing to "look" at ..... Except that helicopters and pilots and crew cost money.
Ottawa , for example is 100 miles by road , less by air , from Mont Tremblant , and they do have helicopters. Unfortunately Ottawa is in Ontario and I don't know how much cooperation there is between the two health systems.
If Ottowa helicopters picked up in Quebec, it would only highlight the irresponsibility of Quebec politicians. This is not a medical disgrace. It is a political disgrace. Even Nova Scotia has shelled out the money to join the 21st Century.
Hind sight is wonderful.
Standard of Care is not "hindsight".
Standard of Care is what everybody else already doing to save life according to evidence based medicine.
You had a key piece of information those people did not:
You knew Quebec public healthcare system does not have medevac helicopters.
The resort staff/entourage are not trained in triage/emergency medicine. They evidently put their faith in the authority of those who were.
I’m sure there’s a whole lot of regret to go around.
Mrs. AV
The didn’t get up and walk away thinking they were fine.
One hit a tree and I forgot what happened to Kennedy.
The actress was then transported to a hospital in Sainte-Agathe, Que., a 40-minute ambulance ride from the Mont Tremblant ski resort.
After she was stabilized, Richardson was transferred to a Montreal trauma centre by ambulance, because, unlike most provinces, Quebec has no emergency helicopter system. The trip took about one hour while a helicopter ride would have carried her to Montreal in 15 minutes.
******
We are a small town (in Arkansas) of twenty thousand and even we have a helicopter system in place.
If you have traveled around the world, you know that every country, every province, every state and every city has it's strong points and it's weak points, and that includes the U.S. If you want to see Third World behavior, go to Windsor, Ontario ..... then cross the river.
Bingo pal ... your earlier reference comparing Victoria, BC to Port-au-Prince, Haiti wasn't flying with anybody with half a brain at FR.
Nice recovery with the Windsor, Ontario ... Detroit comparison.
members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, burned effigies of Redgrave and picketed the awards ceremony in the spring of 1978 to protest against both Redgrave and her support of the Palestinian cause.
In her acceptance speech, Redgrave announced that neither she nor the Academy would be intimidated by “a small bunch of Zionist hooligans - whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world
Since the 1960s, Redgrave has supported a range of human rights causes, including opposition to the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament, freedom for Soviet Jews (she was awarded the Sakharov medal by Sakharov’s widow, Yelena Bonner, in 1993 for her efforts), and aid for Bosnian Muslims and other victims of war. She also advocates the unification of Ireland. She was a co-founding member of Artists Against Racism.
Redgrave identifies as a socialist. Her opposition to Stalinist oppression led her, early in her career, to join the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (UK) (WRP), on whose ticket she twice ran for Parliament. Redgrave’s Trotskyist political views have been a cause of controversy for some, as has her membership in the WRP. She remained loyal to WRP founder Gerry Healy when he was expelled from the WRP in the mid-1980s. She and other Healy loyalists founded the short-lived Marxist Party in the 1990s. Since 2004, she has been a member of the Peace and Progress Party.
In 2004, Vanessa Redgrave and her brother Corin Redgrave announced the launch of the Peace and Progress Party which would campaign against the Iraq War and for human rights.
In March 2006, Redgrave remarked in an interview with US broadcast journalist Amy Goodman, that “I don’t know of a single government that actually abides by international human rights law, not one, including my own. In fact, [they] violate these laws in the most despicable and obscene way, I would say.”
In December 2007, Redgrave was named as one of the possible suretors who paid the £50,000 bail for Jamil al-Banna, one of three British residents arrested after landing back in the UK following four years’ captivity at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Banna is alleged to have run a terrorist cell called the Islamic Alliance which recruited people to fight jihad in Afghanistan and Indonesia. He also is accused of distributing extremist propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden. Redgrave has declined to be specific about her financial involvement but said she was “very happy” to be of “some small assistance for Jamil and his wife”, adding, “It is a profound honour and I am glad to be alive to be able to do this. Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp.”
LOL, just like me. ;-)
But, I must admit, I AM angry at political budget bean counters that have deprived an entire province in a First World country of a basic medical tool in the 21st Century.
I agree that a medivac service should be integrated into Quebec's health care service.
Have a good night.
You ignore one fact. Richardson was taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien . That's 26 miles. Which is faster , a helicopter or an ambulance, when an ambulance is sitting right there ? To go 26 miles. She had a CT scan and was operated on . She suffered a stroke and was taken to Montreal.
Another fact . Richardson was not covered under Quebec health care. Quebec health care was not paying for any care given and an helicopter could have been called . It would have been billed to the patient.
I don't know about Quebec but in Ontario , waiting rooms have books that detail costs to non residents. Richardson was a non resident of Quebec.
I don't doubt she had private coverage which would cover the costs.
I remember her, with Jane Fonda, as outspoken Commies during the Vietnam war. To Hell with both of them
You ignore one fact. Richardson was taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien . That's 26 miles. Which is faster , a helicopter or an ambulance, when an ambulance is sitting right there ? To go 26 miles. She had a CT scan and was operated on . She suffered a stroke and was taken to Montreal. ..... Snowyman
However, Snowyman, you ignore the fact that, in the First World in the 21st Century, she should never have been taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in the first place. Centre Hospitalier Laurentien was a local rural hospital that, in a worst case scenario, could do absolutely NOTHING for her without a neurosurgeon.
After a bad auto crash in our county, my rural hospital never sees the potential neurosurgical cases. They are medevaced, by Airlift Northwest, STRAIGHT to Seattle.
WTF are we going to do with a neurosurgical case at our local rural hospital?
"Well, ummm, Dr. Polybius, as a radiologist you do percutaneus drainages. Can't you just... ummm .. drain that epidural hematoma?"
"Well, ummm, Dr. Wilson, you are the ER doc and your nurses 'draw blood' a lot more than I do. Maybe YOU should handle it."
That was a 40 minute ride to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien ..... after a 20 minute EMT response time .... after the second 911 call ...... and how long did she languish at Centre Hospitalier Laurentien before she stroked out?
The time from the second 911 call to the arrival in Montreal was 4 hours. Those were four utterly wasted hours.
With helo medevac, the helo would have been called out to the ski resort when the 911 call describing closed head trauma with a patient going down the tubes was received. One hour and 10 minutes later, she would have been at the Level One Trauma Center in Montreal and not at Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in the middle of nowhere without a neurosurgeon.
Another fact . Richardson was not covered under Quebec health care. Quebec health care was not paying for any care given and an helicopter could have been called . It would have been billed to the patient.
So, a saavy foreigner, with a family member present, that is not unconscious like they are, can be saved but a Quebecois "covered under Quebec health care" is condemned to death?
For this unsaavy foreigner, who was going to call the private helicopter? The half-conscious patient with an epidural hematoma? The lay people from another country that actually trust that the politicians that fund the Quebec health care system care more about human lives, Canadian or foreign, than about saving money? I am an M.D. from another country and it never even OCCURRED to me that Quebec was the only First World community in North America or Europe that does not have a helicoptor medevac system because Quebec politicians value Canadian Dollars more than they value Canadian lives or foreign lives.
I don't know about Quebec but in Ontario , waiting rooms have books that detail costs to non residents. Richardson was a non resident of Quebec. I don't doubt she had private coverage which would cover the costs.
My patients pay ME to decide what is medically best for them.
It is MY responsibility to save them.
It is not THEIR responsibility to save THEMSELVES.
Neither an unconcious actress nor her family knows how to medically save a patient with a subdural hematoma any more than I know how to direct a movie or land a Boeing 747 at Montreal International Airport.
I have an M.D. degree.
They don't.
I know what an epidural hematoma is.
They don't.
I know that a fall on a bunny slope can kill you.
They don't.
The local M.D's in Quebec know that the lack of a helicopter medevac system is killing people. That is why they are screaming bloody murder to get one.
The politicians in Quebec know that a helicopter medevac system costs their bean-counters money. That is why they prefer to have Quebecois and foreigners in outlying areas die .... To save money.
Yes, fanfan, apart from my "forceful debating style", I am angry about this issue.
Politicians trading budget dollars for lives while they get front of the line privileges for medical care ..... Yeah, that really gets me angry.
Quebec, QC is a world class city (except for it's disgraceful lack of helo-medevac service for it's citizens) and there are many amusements to be experienced there but, there is no "big fancy baseball team" in the entire province of QC.
The Montreal Expos were once in Montreal but they were certainly never big and fancy!
You are though.
Fancy, I mean. Very fancy!!!!
Mr. Atomic Vomit
Why thank you! I know how you love fancy stuff.
Mrs. AV
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.