Medical patients say air travel delays a regular part of healthcare experience

Residents of Labrador’s north coast are sounding the alarm on what they say is a frustrating and broken system of air transportation for medical appointments.

With no roads connecting the remote Inuit and Innu communities to the rest of the province, air travel (or ferry service during part of the year) is the only way to get to medical appointments. But some are facing travel delays, missing work, and missing appointments, they say, due to unpredictable and unreliable transportation.

Torngat Mountains MHA Lela Evans has repeatedly raised the issue in the House of Assembly in recent weeks. But Labrador Affairs Minister Lisa Dempster has refuted Evans’ claims that people have been stuck waiting on flights. Dempster said her office, which has administered the Medical Transportation Assistance Program since 2023, has not received complaints. 

“That was a question that I had asked because I heard the member raising it in the media,” Dempster said in the legislature on Nov. 4, “although I haven’t had a call or anything to my office, specifically. They’re not aware of patients being bumped off flights.”

Evans raised the issue again the following day, saying she found it “very concerning” that Dempster would claim the Department of Health and Community Services was not aware, “because I have written, texted and called the former minister of health and recently the new minister of health and community services, the CEO of the provincial health authority, the vice-president of the Labrador-Grenfell Health region, and the regional director responsible for medical travel in my district regarding specific instances.”

Dempster again said her office had not received a call or text about issues with travel and people missing appointments because of it. She said she was told there was an issue with people not showing up early enough to be booked on flights, which Evans said was not the issue her constituents were facing.

“Speaker, I get constant messages from patients who have the blue slip in Goose Bay, in the day before, before the time limit, and they’re still not able to get on the flight the next day or the next day, or the next day,” Evans said in the House. “Sometimes it can go on for three of four days. So actually talking about processes, people show up. I had parents with a diabetic child, who was having problems at home with the insulin pump, with their guardian, and they couldn’t get on the flight. They had their slip in on Thursday before, so they were entitled to travel on Friday and they were being told they won’t get home even probably on Monday. So that’s the issue. That’s the truth.”

Evans presented a petition to the legislature on Nov. 7 signed by residents of Hopedale urging “our leaders to ensure Northern Labrador residents are provided with access to timely and adequate mental health care. Northern Labrador communities have long suffered the harmful impacts of government policies that have resulted in intergenerational trauma.

“We witness the highest rates of suicide compared to the regions. Survivors of suicide often suffer serious adverse mental health issues. We witness deteriorating physical wellness, such as diabetes and heart disease in many survivors of unresolved trauma. We witness increased children in care in our communities that are often tied to unresolved intergenerational trauma.”

Evans said the stress and anxiety of patients who get delayed traveling for medical appointments impacts their mental health.

“They’re losing pay from their work. They lost all their leave. Often, patients don’t actually have somebody secured to look after their children, after their appointments, and they have to deal with that stress and anxiety. Getting out to your appointment is just one part of the solution. The solution is we have to be able to get our patients out to access timely, adequate health care and we have to make sure we get them home.”

Stuck in Happy Valley-Goose Bay for a week

One of the people Evans was talking about is Dotty Ford, who told The Independent she has been stuck both in her hometown of Nain, and in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, while traveling for medical appointments.

On her most recent trip for an appointment in St John’s, she left Nain for Happy Valley-Goose Bay on a Friday morning.

“In Goose Bay the weather was bad for the first few days, which is understandable — nothing nobody could do about that,” she said. “But on Wednesday, when the flights started moving, there were two mission flights that day, and there was no room for us. They were already both booked full. So they told me Wednesday evening that we would be on the Thursday flight and they would start picking us up around 7 a.m., which was fine. 

“Then, Thursday morning, they called me around 6 a.m. and said, ‘Sorry, that was a mistake. You’re not on this flight either.’ So we had to wait ‘til Friday, and this was after being stuck in Goose Bay a whole week. There were planes flying Wednesday and Thursday, but we had to wait until Friday.”

The delays forced Ford to take time off from work.

“I had to take unpaid leave, which I can’t really afford to do because I live in Nain, with some of the highest food prices in Canada,” she said. “I had to take unpaid leave because I was stuck in Goose Bay and I should have been on that flight Wednesday.”

Ford said it is common to be stuck in Happy Valley-Goose Bay or on the coast when she is travelling for her medical appointments, but that the recent experience was her worst so far. She also pointed to occasional difficulties finding accommodations in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, especially when flights are cancelled late in the day and hotel rooms can be scarce.

‘They need to fix this’

Andrew Boase has been off work for two years battling cancer. He recently spoke with The Independent while stuck in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, where he had a medical appointment and was waiting on a flight home to Hopedale. He was scheduled to return to work for the first time since his diagnosis.

Boase’s appointment was scheduled on a Monday but was postponed two days to Wednesday, the day he was supposed to go back to work. By the time the appointment ended, he had missed his return flight and couldn’t fly the following day because the airline was booked. So he had to wait another day.

“It’s been hard on my life in general in regards to work, where I’ve been off now for two years,” he said. “There’s a few people here waiting to get back home from their appointments, and they had to wait, like me. In my case, it’s been hard living on disability pay, which is only […] like $700 a month. That’s what I got to live on, so I was anxious to get back to the workforce and go back to work. That’s what I’m trying to do, but I don’t even know now if the job will be waiting for me.”

Boase understands appointments being rescheduled, but he says patients shouldn’t have to wait days to get home and back to work.

“We have to come [to Goose Bay] and St. John’s for appointments — there’s nothing like that in Hopedale,” he said. “I’ve been going back and forth a lot and I’ve gotten stuck here lots of times. They need to fix this.”

Delays getting in and out on medical flights can cause other issues too, including, as Evans said in the House of Assembly, missing appointments. 

Mary Beth Clark, who lives in Makkovik, said she often faces delays when traveling for medical reasons, especially when connecting flights are involved.

“I’ve missed my appointments a few times because of it,” she said, explaining a delayed flight into Goose Bay means patients are forced to take risks. “If a flight is delayed at all, we have to take the chance of going up [to Goose Bay] and catching the connecting flight, if we get there in time,” she explained. “Or we take the chance of going up and then we can’t go to St John’s because we couldn’t get our connecting flight because we got there so late, so we miss our appointments in St John’s.”

Missing an appointment sometimes means having to wait months for a rescheduled one.

“It takes a long time to get a medical appointment, especially in St John’s,” Clark said. “When you’re going out there for medical, it’s hard to reschedule and reschedule and reschedule. That’s why a lot of people decide they don’t even want to leave our town to go for medical appointments, because they don’t want to get stuck and still miss their appointment.”

Ford said it’s “ridiculous” how often flights are delayed, canceled, or people get bumped off and have to wait days for another flight. 

She said she was shocked to hear Dempster say there were no complaints from the public about the medical flights, and wonders where the complaints go if the government has no record of them.