Doctor says confusion reason behind queue jumping
Posted Feb 25, 2013 6:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A high-ranking doctor says he didn’t realize his patients would move to the front of the line when he booked them outside the rules.
Dr. Ron Bridges, founder of Calgary’s Colon Cancer Screening Centre, has told Alberta’s queue-jumping inquiry he was never clear on how patients were to be booked into the clinic.
Bridges said that because of that confusion, he simply booked his private referrals through senior management at the publicly funded facility.
The inquiry has heard that from 2008 to 2012 favoured patients were moved to the front of the line and tested for colon cancer in weeks while everyone else waited years.
Many of the fast-tracked patients came from the privately run Helios Wellness Centre, which donates $200,000 or more a year to the University of Calgary’s medical faculty.
Bridges is an associate dean currently in charge of fundraising for the faculty.
