Allison Hanes: Montreal physician goes public over MUHC's 'try and silence me'

The Collège des médecins in the end dismissed an ethics grievance introduced in opposition to Dr. Paul Saba by the MUHC over his Lachine Hospital ER feedback.

Revealed Apr 18, 2023 • Final up to date 3 hours in the past • 5 minute learn

“There’s no profit for me to go public on this subject apart from to encourage different docs and nurses to talk publicly,” says Dr. Paul Saba, seen on the entrance of the Lachine Hospital. Picture by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal Gazette

Dr. Paul Saba has lengthy been a vocal defender of group hospitals.

He believes in them a lot that he answered the decision 20 years in the past from then-health minister François Legault to serve in a few of Quebec’s most understaffed regional emergency rooms, together with in Roberval, La Baie and the Gaspé. He earned a letter of appreciation on the time from Legault, now Quebec premier.

So when the emergency room at Lachine Hospital was closed in a single day within the fall of 2021 due to employees shortages, Saba was outspoken in regards to the hurt it may trigger the native inhabitants, together with an elevated danger of sufferers dying. As president of the council of physicians, dentists and pharmacists at Lachine Hospital, the place he has labored for greater than 15 years, he gave voice to each his personal apprehensions and people of many colleagues, who voted in a gathering to object to the partial shutdown and despatched letters expressing their collective concern to the McGill College Well being Centre, Well being Minister Christian Dubé and Legault’s workplace.

Saba isn’t any stranger to the media. He regularly provides interviews and pens opinion items for newspapers. He additionally based the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice, a non-profit advocacy group, in 1998.

However he was surprised by the message that arrived by electronic mail in December 2021 from the Collège des médecins du Québec. It was discover of an ethics grievance filed in opposition to him by the MUHC over his public feedback on the Lachine Hospital ER.

Written on the letterhead of then-MUHC president and CEO Dr. Pierre Gfeller, the grievance alleged that: “Dr. Saba clearly made statements that have been non-factual, inaccurate and unverifiable, interfered in a medical area (group of companies, emergency drugs, intensive care) for which he has no explicit {qualifications},” and made “feedback that have been alarming and inexact from a scientific perspective.”

Unusually, it additionally claimed he misrepresented himself as the pinnacle of the council of physicians, dentists and pharmacists at Lachine Hospital, an elected place he has held since 2006, acknowledged within the minutes of numerous MUHC conferences.

The grievance included quotes from Saba in French and English printed within the Montreal Gazette, Radio-Canada, TVA, CBC, La Presse and different shops relationship again to 2019 (when he contested an earlier resolution to switch gynecology companies from Lachine to LaSalle) and one from 2013, when he expressed qualms Lachine can be remodeled into an “ambulatory clinic.” The letter requested the syndic to “quickly pay attention to this matter, given its pressing nature … to place a cease to the comportment of Dr. Paul Saba.”

The Collège in the end dismissed the case and closed the file in opposition to Saba in January this yr. Though rejected complaints are sometimes stored confidential, Saba himself is coming ahead now to denounce what he believes was a transfer to mute criticism.

“It was an try and silence me, however it didn’t silence me,” Saba stated in an interview. “I used to be like ‘That is completely ridiculous.’ I wasn’t mad. I assumed ‘In the event that they need to go this far, I have to be proper.’ What it did was it confirmed that I used to be proper and it made me wish to write extra. I by no means wrote a lot within the newspapers.”

Though Saba refused to be intimidated, the allegations have been critical. The implications may have been devastating had the Collège discovered an ethics breach.

“I wouldn’t have the ability to practise drugs, I wouldn’t have the ability to run my workplace anymore, I’d have to shut my medical observe,” Saba stated. “It’s a means of destroying the messenger since you don’t just like the message.”

He needed to mount a defence, explaining why his expertise as a household practitioner, doing shifts in ERs and staffing intensive-care models certified him to talk about the significance of group hospitals. (That letter from Legault got here in helpful, together with one other from former well being minister and premier Philippe Couillard.) Fortuitously, his insurer coated the price of his lawyer, recognizing the case as a matter of freedom of expression. In any other case, the method may have been costly.

It took 13 months to be resolved.

“I name that David in opposition to Goliath. I’ve nothing to reproach the Collège for. I used to be by no means apprehensive or involved for myself. I knew I used to be combating a simply trigger,” Saba stated. “I acquired vindicated by the Collège and I’m grateful for that, that they noticed by the noise.”

Nonetheless, Saba wonders in regards to the chill impact on fellow medical professionals throughout a interval of upheaval and reform.

“There’s no profit for me to go public on this subject apart from to encourage different docs and nurses to talk publicly,” he stated. “They’re afraid. And I perceive their concern. It’s not an unwarranted concern, as a result of you may see what occurred to me.”

Increasingly more whistleblowers are sounding the alarm in regards to the failings of Quebec’s crumbling well being system, just like the nameless sources who flagged main issues on the Lakeshore Basic to the Gazette’s Aaron Derfel. Going public with frustrations is usually the one strategy to generate a response, because the nurses on the Maisonneuve-Rosemont ER who threatened to stop en masse demonstrated. However in an period of more and more centralized administration, with Quebec proposing to place day-to-day operations of well being care within the fingers of a single employer, Santé Québec, will dissent be tolerated?

The MUHC declined to touch upon the grievance in opposition to Saba and referred queries to the Collège.

For its half, spokesperson Leslie Labranche stated the Collège has a duty to make sure docs “talk info to the general public that conforms with scientific information.” There have been a handful of complaints about physicians’ public statements, coinciding with the pandemic and an increase in social media use. After investigations that diverse in scope, she stated none have been forwarded to the disciplinary committee. (One exception: a non-public grievance by an advert hoc syndic.)

Saba’s primary concern is the way forward for Lachine Hospital. The ER stays closed to walk-in sufferers between 10 p.m. and eight a.m. whereas ambulances are nonetheless being diverted. A brand new plan on its mission is imminent.

“No matter they do, I’ll proceed to combat for the group hospital. We’d like it, and it’s not simply Lachine,” Saba stated. “There are over 10 hospitals throughout the province (the place the ERs) have been partially or fully closed. We have now to combat for these, too.”

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CORRECTION: An earlier model of this story didn’t specify that it’s the ERs in 10 hospitals in Quebec are completlely or partially closed. The Gazette regrets the error.

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