Family still seeking answers 2 weeks after man's death in N.B. ER waiting room

Alain Therrien is still looking for answers more than two weeks after his father died in a hospital emergency room.

Robert Therrien, 76, died in the waiting room at the Edmundston Regional Hospital's emergency department on Dec. 7.

The father of five from Rivière-Verte, southeast of the city, had been triaged, monitored and cared for, and his condition was deemed stable at the time, according to Vitalité Health Network.

However, he died after waiting for hours for followup care.

"Apart from the coroner, as we speak, no one from the hospital has ever called me to tell me what happened," Alain Therrien said of the response to his father's death.

Therrien said he's been in contact with the coroner and was told his father died of a heart attack.

It's a revelation that's left him wondering why his father wasn't attended to more urgently.

"At one point he fell out of his chair," Therrien said.

"Staff were never able to resuscitate him. They tried to resuscitate him for 25 minutes. This was also told to me by witnesses who were there."

Therrien said the coroner also viewed more than five hours of videotapes showing his father in the emergency department's waiting room.

Therrien said the footage shows his father drop his identification cards when the triage nurse asked for them.

"He was really not well," Therrien said. "Even his vital signs were low.

"But they classified it as non-urgent. The whole time he was there, he always had his arms crossed and he changed his position often."

Therrien said his father lived in a nursing home in the Edmundston area. He had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for almost eight years.

Network reviewing case

Vitalité Health Network said the hospital's ER was experiencing a "high level of traffic and long wait times" when Robert Therrien died, but the health network doesn't believe this caused his death.

Vitalité is now undertaking a review of what happened, and plans to share the results with his family.

Therrien said that for now, questions remain as to how his father died, and why the hospital didn't call him about his father.

"We have many questions, but we have no answers," Therrien said. "And it will take answers."