The death of two hospital patients in Quebec has once again thrust the issue of health care wait times into the spotlight.
Family and friends mourned the loss of 86-year-old Mariette Fournier Tuesday after she spent four days on a stretcher in Maisonneuve Rosemont Hospital's overcrowded emergency room. She had numerous underlying health issues and suffered from Alzheimer's disease, said family members.
Jean-Guy Pitre, 65, died last week waiting for heart surgery he was told by doctors he needed in September.
Each problem on the strained system should be brought before a parliamentary commission, proposed Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc Tuesday.
Though Bolduc said there have been some improvements to the system, such as cutting the waiting list for cardiac surgery by half within a decade, he conceded there is still much work to be done.
"We have some cases that are very sad... What we want is that we don't want to have these cases," he said.
A 2009 Fraser Institute study showed that Quebec has the third-shortest wait times for surgery and other treatments, with a median of 16.6 weeks, or four-and-a-half months.
