Winnipeg woman wants changes after father with dementia disappeared from hospital for hours

A Winnipeg woman wants to see changes to protocols at hospitals and personal care homes after her 84-year-old father who has dementia wandered away from Concordia Hospital and was found nine kilometres away hours later.

Shelley Orvis said her father Glen was taken to hospital by ambulance in the early afternoon on March 3, after he had woken up with a fever and headache.

Orvis said her mom wasn’t able to ride in the ambulance with Glen because paramedics told her it was against COVID-19 protocol.

Despite not being able to go right away, Orvis said her mom went to Concordia Hospital later in the day to check on Glen and bring him some food. As she was checking in for the COVID screening at the door, Orvis said her mom couldn’t see Glen in the waiting room.

“Then the nurse came out and she said, ‘He’s not here.’ And my mom said, ‘What do you mean he is not here?’ (The nurse) said, ‘He’s gone. He left.’ Then (my mom) said, ‘What do you mean he left?’ And she got hysterical,” said Orvis.

Immediately, Orvis said her mom called her and she spoke with the nurse about what was happening. She was told a Code Yellow was called and the hospital called police to report that Glen was missing.

After being told the news, Orvis said her family started searching for Glen.

“We started driving around in that vicinity…we went to all the places they had lived. My brother knocked on doors of all those places…because you don’t know what a dementia mind is thinking.”

Orvis also put a post on Facebook asking people to keep an eye out for him.

Around 9 p.m., Orvis said she received a call from her brother saying that her dad had been found. Glen was found about nine kilometres away from the hospital stumbling on the median at Main Street and Chief Peguis Trail.

Orvis said a woman saw him on the side of the road and pulled over to help him and eventually called 911.

“There’s just so many things that could have happened to him in that length of time. If our temperatures were colder like the day before and he fell before anybody saw him, he definitely would have frozen to death.”

Following the incident, Orvis said she wants to see changes to how dementia patients are dealt with and wants staff at hospitals and care homes to be better trained on how to deal with people with dementia.

Laura Tamblyn Watts, the CEO of CanAge, a national senior advocacy group, said the situation involving the Orvis family was outrageous.

“This man could have easily frozen to death in his nine-kilometre hike,” said Tamblyn Watts.

She too wants to see protocols change and is hoping technology like trackers are better utilized to keep people safe, especially if they don’t have an advocate available.

“We need to make sure we learn this lesson finally. It’s not going to change with COVID-19. What we are looking at is an ageing population and we need to make sure our health-care settings know how to deal with it.”

A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said it has requested this incident be investigated as a potential critical incident and it has also been sent to the Manitoba Health’s Persons for Protection in Care office.

Orvis said she wants to raise her voice and work with senior advocate groups to see if she can help start a conversation to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again to her family or others in Manitoba.