WRHA palliative home care on good path after failures, review recommendations: advocate

More than eight months since Eric de Schepper's partner died of cancer, an external report into the WRHA's home care failures and ways forward is providing him validation.

An external review of palliative home care in Winnipeg is shedding light on how the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) failed to provide a cancer patient the home care she was promised in her final days.

More than eight months since Eric de Schepper’s partner died of pancreatic cancer, a report into home care’s failures and ways forward is providing validation.

“It makes me feel that we’re on a positive track here,” de Schepper said Wednesday.

The WRHA supplied de Schepper with the review last week, although it was completed in June.

It reveals what happened before Katherine Ellis’s passing in February that led to an absence of home care and Ellis lying in the same sheets for weeks. The WRHA had promised them workers would come by weekly to provide her care and respite for de Schepper.

The report shows her case was mistakenly assigned the wrong priority, a Priority 3 instead of a Priority 1 request.

Some internal communications and conversations with de Schepper also weren’t carried out or documented, resulting in a home care attendant arriving at their house unaware Ellis had died days earlier.

“To me, it clearly shows that there is a lack of staffing,” de Schepper said.