Latest news with #RogerFoley
The Province
3 days ago
- Health
- The Province
Not budging: Meet Ontario's nine-year (and counting) hospital patient
Staying put in a hospital he admits he doesn't need, in a standoff over his care wants, Roger Foley is an extreme example of a bed-blocker. Locked in a standoff with the health system over home care he wants to direct himself, Roger Foley lies in his bed at the London Health Sciences Centre's Victoria Hospital where he's been since early 2016. This image was overexposed to offset darker lighting in the room. Photograph taken on Friday, May 23, 2025.(Mike Hensen/The London Free Press) Roger Foley was admitted to hospital in London so long ago, Justin Trudeau – now gone after nearly a decade as prime minister – was only three months into Canada's top job. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors The COVID-19 pandemic was still four years away, and the world would not know Donald Trump as a U.S. president – in his first go-round in the job – for another year yet. More than nine years later, Foley is still at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) where he was admitted on Feb. 5, 2016. The 49-year-old, who lives with severe disabilities that limit his ability to move and care for himself, doesn't leave LHSC's Victoria Hospital. Foley gets few visitors to his sixth-floor room and is the first to admit that he doesn't need the level of advanced medical care that Southwestern Ontario's largest hospital provides. He'd rather receive home care by a team of his choosing, a departure from the norm in Ontario's publicly funded system. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Instead, Foley remains in an inpatient bed after all these years – at the centre of a protracted legal fight that one expert calls a 'three-way standoff' with LHSC and provincial health care bureaucracies over his care needs. 'He's right in the middle of one of the most complicated policy questions in Ontario's health care system,' said Rosalie Wyonch, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute. 'There's always someone who doesn't want what the public options are and wants their own choices. . . . This patient is at this ambiguous centre point of who should be responsible for their care and how much autonomy should they have in that choice.' Foley, originally from the Ottawa area, has a significant, genetic neurodegenerative condition that limits his mobility. He can't walk and relies on ceiling-track hoists to help him move. He also eats a pureed food diet because he has difficulty swallowing. Essential reading for hockey fans who eat, sleep, Canucks, repeat. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He's been transferred between units at Victoria Hospital since he was first admitted, including the mental health, nephrology and sub-acute medicine departments. In an interview with The London Free Press, Foley said he'd been living independently in his London apartment with the assistance of home care workers before his hospital admission in February 2016. But he claims the care he received was deeply inadequate and a contributing factor to his hospitalization. Shaken by his past home care experience, Foley has some very specific demands for the kind of supports he wants to receive and has spent years waging various legal fights to try to get them. He's sought, unsuccessfully, to get funding from the provincial government to hire specific home care workers of his choosing, almost as if they were his employees. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Typically, patients that qualify for government-funded home care are sent help from a service provider under contract with the province. The self-directed funding for home care that Foley sought is not the norm in Ontario but is available in rare circumstances, including for children with complex medical needs and adults with acquired brain injuries. 'Right now, access to the directed home care funding would fix this,' Foley said, adamant that the typical home care funding regime in Ontario won't provide him with adequate support. 'It's something that I need,' he said. Foley said he still pays rent at his northeast London accessible apartment and wishes to return there, provided his home care demands are met. His name still appears on the building's directory. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He said he doesn't want to be placed in long-term care and has resisted a recent suggestion by LHSC that he should be transferred there. 'I'm still young,' he said, questioning the quality of care he would be able to receive in long-term care. 'I want to be a part of the community. I want to spend time with my family and friends in the community. . . . Why should I be confined to a long-term care room just because I have disabilities?' Foley declined to give permission to his doctors or care team, who are bound by patient confidentiality rules, to speak about the particulars of his case with The Free Press. Foley is an extreme example of a so-called alternate level of care (ALC) patient. That's someone who no longer requires hospital-grade medical care, but remains in a hospital bed awaiting a long-term care or home care placement. Such bed-blocking patients accounted for 17 per cent of all acute care bed days in Canada as recently as 2022-23. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'ALC patients take up more patient bed capacity than all the top 10 surgeries combined,' said Wyonch, a health system researcher who has extensively studied ALC patient flow. 'It's probably the single-biggest hospital capacity issue. If we were to fix it, we would essentially no longer be at risk of acute care bed shortages.' Furthermore, ALC patients cost the health system between $730 to $1,200 a day, as opposed to the $225 to $253 for long-term care placement. Hospitals have a legal and ethical responsibility to provide care to patients who come through their doors, Wyonch said. Foley is, in essence, LHSC's problem. 'It's the most extreme example that I've heard of,' she said, adding Foley is 'in the sweet spot for where a case can become complicated.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Patient cooperation, and the coordination between community health operators and the hospital, need to work really, really well,' she said. 'It sounds like that coordination is not functioning.' LHSC's Victoria Hospital (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press) At LHSC, the average hospital stay was 6.6 days as of the 2023-24 budget year. Across Ontario, hospitals work to boost bed capacity by increasing patient flow through the system. LHSC is bound by its legal duty to protect patient confidentiality and can't discuss the specifics of Foley's case. Still, the hospital acknowledged the situation is 'extremely complex and has been the subject of extensive legal proceedings over many years. 'Hospitals like LHSC are not designed or resourced to provide long-term residential care,' LHSC, speaking generally, said in an emailed statement to The Free Press. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'When patient care needs are complex and they do not want to voluntarily leave and remain in acute care settings longer than medically necessary, it places significant strain on our ability to serve other patients.' Again speaking generally, and not about Foley's circumstances, LHSC said it works with partners in the health system 'to support appropriate care transitions' but said there are 'limited specialized resources for certain high-needs individuals. 'Managing the needs of complex, long-term hospital patients is not just a challenge for the hospital and physicians, but also for patients and their families,' LHSC said. In Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government's More Beds, Better Care Act, which allows hospitals to move discharged patients into nursing homes not of their choosing or fine them $400 a day if they remain in hospital, provides some mechanisms to alleviate ALC pressures on hospitals, LHSC said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. However, 'extremely complex or exceptional cases continue to present major challenges without clear or easily available solutions,' the hospital said. Tensions between Foley, LHSC and other health care system organizations have hit a boiling point in recent years, with various court battles and legal skirmishes. In August 2018, Foley filed a statement of claim seeking $20 million in damages for alleged infringements of his rights under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms and $3 million in punitive damages against LHSC and others. Statements of claim contain allegations not tested in court. Among other claims, Foley's lawsuit claimed LHSC staff pressured him to pursue a medically assisted death, an end-of-life option he vehemently rejects, and unjustly refused to provide funding for the level of care he required. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Foley's lawsuit, which was amended twice, was struck in its entirety last year by Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Centa, who called it 'inflammatory' and a violation of the rules for such documents. Foley was ordered to pay $100,449 in legal costs to several defendants, including about $28,000 to LHSC. He is working to reopen the costs decision so he can restart the litigation, said Michael Alexander, a lawyer who is providing guidance to the self-represented Foley. Foley has also resisted transfer to long-term care, a move he said LHSC suggested last year. In September 2024, Foley sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mount Hope, a long-term care facility operated by St. Joseph's Health Care London, demanding the care home take no further action to admit him. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care in London (Free Press file photo) Foley said LHSC has made no further suggestions about transferring him to long-term care since. Foley in May filed a complaint against LHSC with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, alleging the hospital discriminated against him on the basis of disability by taking away a specific lighting accommodation in his room. Foley's allegation against LHSC has not yet been tested by the quasi-judicial tribunal. Foley's situation – the legal fights and nine-year hospital stay – is extremely rare and unusual, but raises interesting questions about how much say people should be entitled to over the structure and form of their publicly funded health care, Wyonch said. In some places, such as in Quebec and Germany, self-directed funding for home care is the default, she said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'What this patient wants rises to the legislative policy level,' Wyonch said. 'This particular patient and what he wants falls into a very specific crack that involves how we're providing support, services or cash to hire services, as well as the institutional divisions within the health care system.' Alexander, who is not Foley's lawyer but is providing some informal guidance on the court process, said the people in charge have lost the plot through the various legal battles and ongoing disputes. Alexander calls Foley's situation Kafka-esque, a term – based on the fictional work of author Franz Kafka – coined to describe frightening, confusing, bureaucratic scenarios with a bizarre or illogical quality. 'Why hasn't anyone stepped back and said, 'Why can't we help Roger get self-directed home care so we can send him home?' Nobody is doing that. Nobody has ever done that,' he said. 'The system has consistently let him down.' Read More News Vancouver Canucks Vancouver Whitecaps Sports Junior Hockey
National Post
3 days ago
- General
- National Post
This Canadian patient has been in the hospital for 9 years and refuses to leave
Roger Foley was admitted to hospital in London so long ago, Justin Trudeau – now gone after nearly a decade as prime minister – was only three months into Canada's top job. Article content The COVID-19 pandemic was still four years away, and the world would not know Donald Trump as a U.S. president – in his first go-round in the job – for another year yet. Article content More than nine years later, Foley is still at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) where he was admitted on Feb. 5, 2016. Article content Article content The 49-year-old, who lives with severe disabilities that limit his ability to move and care for himself, doesn't leave LHSC's Victoria Hospital. Article content Article content Foley gets few visitors to his sixth-floor room and is the first to admit that he doesn't need the level of advanced medical care that Southwestern Ontario's largest hospital provides. He'd rather receive home care by a team of his choosing, a departure from the norm in Ontario's publicly funded system. Article content Instead, Foley remains in an inpatient bed after all these years – at the centre of a protracted legal fight that one expert calls a 'three-way standoff' with LHSC and provincial health care bureaucracies over his care needs. Article content 'He's right in the middle of one of the most complicated policy questions in Ontario's health care system,' said Rosalie Wyonch, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute. Article content 'There's always someone who doesn't want what the public options are and wants their own choices. . . . This patient is at this ambiguous centre point of who should be responsible for their care and how much autonomy should they have in that choice.' Article content Article content Foley, originally from the Ottawa area, has a significant, genetic neurodegenerative condition that limits his mobility. He can't walk and relies on ceiling-track hoists to help him move. He also eats a pureed food diet because he has difficulty swallowing. Article content Article content He's been transferred between units at Victoria Hospital since he was first admitted, including the mental health, nephrology and sub-acute medicine departments. Article content In an interview with The London Free Press, Foley said he'd been living independently in his London apartment with the assistance of home care workers before his hospital admission in February 2016. But he claims the care he received was deeply inadequate and a contributing factor to his hospitalization.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'I am a human being with medically documented disabilities, not a policy problem': Hospital Torments Man With Suicide Talk
Hospital staff have repeatedly pushed a disabled Canadian man to accept euthanasia. Now, he says, they are repeatedly asking him about suicide while cutting off basic needs like food and water. 'I'm doing my best to hang in, but I truly don't know how much longer my body can hold on,' patient Roger Foley wrote in a message to The Dallas Express. 'I think that there is no hope.' Patient Roger Foley has spinocerebellar ataxia, a neurological disease that makes movement extremely difficult. Foley requires a medical lift to perform basic tasks like eating, drinking, and taking medication. Since Canada's universal healthcare system limits his medical options, he has been at the hospital for nine years. The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) staff previously withheld food and water and pushed 'medical assistance in dying' (MAID) – another term for euthanasia – on Foley, according to The Federalist. He said the hospital stopped asking him about this for several years. But since the end of April, Foley told The Dallas Express, staff have started bringing up suicide 'almost every night.' He also said since he does not consent to bright lighting during treatment – which he says aggravates his neurological symptoms – the hospital again cut off food, water, medicine, and toileting. At the time of publication, Foley said he was on an IV and growing weak. The Dallas Express asked LHSC for comment but did not hear back in time for publication. Foley said he has been surviving on IV fluids for more than two weeks. He said he fears 'if this situation continues, I will die.' 'This has become a matter of survival,' Foley wrote in a recent email to hospital staff, obtained by The Dallas Express. 'I am deteriorating.' Pushing Suicide Questions In recent weeks, Foley told The Dallas Express, staff have been coming by his room 'almost every night' to discuss suicide. '[T]he hospital has not stopped and i [sic] am being harassed all the time and staff won't leave me alone,' Foley wrote in an email. 'I tell them not to ask me those questions.' Foley told The Dallas Express that the staff have asked him suicide questions during routine tasks like bloodwork. He provided recordings of recent interactions with staff to The Dallas Express, eight of which mention suicide. In many of these recordings, nurses enter Foley's room to ask him about a suicide assessment, and he rebuffs them. 'I have repeatedly ask [sic] to not ask me any questions about suicide but the hospital ignores me,' he said. 'I do not want to die, I want to live.' Foley said one instance took place on May 4 at 3:45 a.m. He shared a recording of the interaction with The Dallas Express. JoshZynomirski(Nurse)-ForcesSuicideQuestionsOnRoger-May4th2025At330AM 'Rog, there's just a quick question,' a staff member said. 'Don't ask me if it has anything to do with suicide,' Foley replied. 'The hospital is not to ask me ever about suicide… Do not ask. Do not ask… How many times do I have to tell the hospital?' The staff member continued to push the question. 'Wait Rog, just to make sure, you're refusing …,' the staff member insisted. 'I'm just saying, do you refuse?' 'This has to stop… Just don't ask me,' Foley said. In another recording, he asks Doctor Jaspal Dulay why staff are engaging in 'harassment about the suicide questions.' Dulay replied that Foley 'normally would be high up on concerns around your mental health because of what's going on with your care. You made it clear you're feeling at harm.' DrDulayRefusesToStopSuicideQuestions-May16th2025At926AM Foley asked Dulay if the staff would 'keep on doing the harassment about that.' 'I deny that we're harassing you,' Dulay said. 'You're saying it, I'm saying we're not harassing you.' The Dallas Express contacted Dulay but did not hear back in time for publication. Michael Alexander, an attorney who provides legal advice to Foley, told The Dallas Express that Canada's euthanasia law leaves room for hospital staff to ask questions about suicide. But he said they are bringing it up beyond reason. 'It's not just one nurse doing this, it's become a pattern of conduct on the part of hospital personnel,' Alexander said. 'They're clearly in the wrong.' Alex Schadenberg, executive director of Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told The Dallas Express that Foley goes through 'a lot of emotional grief' and has felt suicidal, but hospital workers' continual questions about suicide could be considered pressure. 'It's almost like they're harassing him because it's one thing to say, 'We're concerned about your mental health,' it's another thing to have someone tell you, 'Please stop bringing up suicidality,'' Schadenberg said. 'To have them bringing it up anyway – even if there's some other intention behind it – it seems to me that it's becoming a bit of a coercion situation where he's feeling pressured.' 'You Don't Want Any Care' The hospital recently began requiring brighter lighting when interacting with Foley. He said his disability makes him extremely photosensitive, as bright lights cause him 'extreme pain, temporary blindness, visual scaring [sic] afterwards of blue and purple markings on my vision, and severe pain,' he wrote in an email. The hospital had been using a dim, orange lamp when treating Foley for years, but recently issued a lighting assessment — obtained by The Dallas Express – that requires brighter lighting when interacting with him. He said staff usually come in at all hours of the day and night, so this bright lighting is a frequent occurrence. Hospital staff reportedly cut off Foley's food, water, medications, and toileting when they began requiring brighter lighting on May 7, he said to The Dallas Express. He said he is still 'cut off,' though one nurse helped with these tasks on May 23 by providing ski goggles and reducing the lighting. Foley said the next night, the staff refused to accommodate. 'So far, that one night of access has been the only one,' Foley wrote in an email. 'I'm still on IV fluids and now back to being completely blocked from basic needs. I'm extremely weak, but still trying.' Foley wrote in an email he 'can barely raise mt [sic] head' and fears acidosis – a buildup of acid in the body. He also said he fears for his life. 'They are witholding [sic] food and water, and everything. they won;t [sic] help me unless full lights that they know my eyes cannot tolerate,' he wrote in an email. According to Foley, the hospital recently made some adjustments, removing several lights and replacing others with dimmer bulbs. However, he expressed concern in an email to administrators that 'the hospital shows no urgency and continues to deny me proper accommodation, even if it leads to my death.' He also said that since then, 'the hospital added an additional bright halogen.' 'Staff forcibly waking me, turning on harmful lighting without warning, asking suicide questions, and ignoring available alternatives is not safe or respectful — it is negligent,' Foley wrote officials in an email. 'I am not refusing care — I am being denied the ability to access it due to an environment made hostile by the S[tandard] O[perating] P[rocedure] you enforce.' A History Of Pushing Euthanasia Canada's universal healthcare system limits Foley's medical choices to a home care provider or the hospital. Foley said he first used an in-home care provider, but poor treatment left him suicidal at the time. He was denied the universal healthcare system's self-directed care program, which would allow him to hire his own home care staff. So nine years ago, he opted for care at LHSC, and has been there ever since. Foley has struggled with suicidal thoughts, so early on in his time at the hospital, he requested euthanasia – also known as MAID, according to The Federalist. He soon overcame these thoughts and canceled the appointment. However, hospital staff repeatedly pressured Foley to accept MAID from 2016 to 2018. He provided a recording of one interaction from 2018 with The Dallas Express, in which a staff member suggested ending his life. SamualBodden(nurse)LHSC-PitchingRogerToHaveAssistedDeath-Jan21st2018 'How are you feeling, Rog? Are you feeling like you want to harm yourself or anything like that?' the staff member asks. 'If you were, you could just apply to get an assisted – you don't have to do it in some dramatic manner, you can apply for assisted, you know.' Foley also told The Dallas Express that Doctor Robert Sibbald, the hospital's ethicist who suggested harvesting organs from euthanasia patients before they are dead according to The Federalist, pushed euthanasia on him in 2017. At the time, The Federalist published a partial recording of the interaction. The Dallas Express asked Sibbald for comment but did not hear back in time for publication. LHSC cut off Foley's access to the medical lift in 2018. According to The Federalist, an opinion from an outside doctor that year concluded the hospital's 'care fell substantially below standard for failing to meet Foley's nutritional and hydration needs during the period in question.' The LHSC also allegedly moved Foley into a ward with 'intense lighting' in May 2020, according to a complaint he filed with the hospital. 'At that time, I was confined to an intravenous drip and forced to cover my face with soft pillowcases to block the harmful light,' Foley wrote in the complaint. Alexander told The Dallas Express that Canadian doctors have been known to push euthanasia or withdraw treatment early. 'There are some public hospitals in Canada that will nudge a vulnerable patient towards death by compromising the basic rudiments of treatment,' he said. Foley is currently representing himself in a lawsuit against LHSC for its treatment, and Alexander said he is approaching a major deadline to submit case materials. 'Let me survive long enough to secure the direct funding home care I need to live and do legal work,' Foley wrote officials in an email. Schadenberg told The Dallas Express that Foley is 'really in a bad place.' 'The hospital may not be intentionally saying it per se, but by making certain decisions, they seem to be saying they want him out of there,' he said. Schadenberg suggested a simple solution: give Foley 'self-directed care.' This would allow him to leave the hospital and hire his own in-home caregivers. 'He's been turned down for that, and he's now in this very bad situation,' Schadenberg said. 'He can't live on his own, and he doesn't trust the care that he used to receive in the past.' In Canada, euthanasia is 'being normalized in a bigger and bigger way,' as many doctors 'simply see it as another form of medical treatment,' according to Schadenberg. 'They have totally divorced us from the reality of what it is, just killing somebody,' he said. He said the second main issue in Canada is the treatment of people with disabilities, whose 'needs are massively underfunded.' Schadenberg said disability entitlements have lagged behind post-COVID inflation, so people with disabilities are now 'massively underfunded.' In an email obtained by The Dallas Express, Foley pleaded with hospital officials to consider alternative care approaches. He called the current approach 'systemic neglect and discrimination.' 'I am a human being with medically documented disabilities, not a policy problem,' Foley wrote in an email to hospital officials, obtained by The Dallas Express. 'Stop this cruelty and work with me to survive.'
