‘This happens all the time’ Mid Island resident died without access to modern cardiac care, NRGH doctor reports
Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, October 6, 2026
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Without access to a cardiac cath lab in Nanaimo, local residents may pay the price with their lives.
This is according to Dr. David Forrest, head of infectious disease and critical care at NRGH, who pressed the need for a cardiac cath lab and new patient tower, to attendees at the Fair Care For All Public Health Forum on Sept. 24.
Forrest said recently, medical staff responded to a case of a 65-year-old woman who collapsed in the washroom, which was heard by her husband, who found her barely breathing and called 911.
“They found her in cardiac arrest. They resuscitated her and brought her to Nanaimo hospital,” Forrest said. “There, an EKG showed she was having a heart attack, so immediately called cardiology in Victoria who advised she would best be treated with an angioplasty.”
The problem is, an angioplasty can’t be performed in Nanaimo due to the lack of a cardiac cath lab, and she would need to be treated in Victoria.
“Eighty minutes later, despite trying to stabilize her, she continued to deteriorate and had another cardiac arrest. At that point we gave her a clot busting drug, we actually got her blood pressure back briefly. But she continued to deteriorate and in a few minutes she died.”
According to Forrest, this recent incident wasn’t a one-off event.
“This scenario happens all the time, every week in Nanaimo. We are going to comfort emergency room staff who cannot provide the service their patients need. Every week someone is suffering in Nanaimo because of this lack of access. This is unacceptable.”
Attending the forum was electoral candidates for the upcoming municipal election who were pressed by doctors and other health care advocates about the need for hospital tower and cardiac cath lab, as well as given a chance to be educated about the role the municipality has in funding hospital infrastructure during the Fair Care For All Public Health Forum on Sept. 24.
Two major projects at NRGH, a cardiac cath lab and full-service patient tower, are in the concept planning stage, which the Ministry of Infrastructure told the News Bulletin in February it expects the step to take up to 18 months.
If it progresses, it will then enter the business plan, then issuance of the request for proposals, then construction stage.
Long advocated for by local doctors, Forrest gave an update on both projects.
“At the end of the day, I think the physicians in Victoria are wholly supportive of the development of services north of the Malahat,” Forrest said. “They also know their patients are being denied access in Victoria because we are occupying a bunch of their beds and resources, and that is a problem for residents in Victoria.”
More importantly, Forrest said Island Health has been “abundantly clear” in its support.
“They are the ones who will determine where the health care resources are distributed.”
Donna Hais, Fair Care Alliance chair, told the News Bulletin the message they wanted the audience to take away is that municipal governments have a role to play in the health care conversation.
“And when they have a role to play, such as collecting taxpayers’ dollars, they should have a say in where that goes and which projects and what times those projects happen,” she said.
As audience members were told, this isn’t currently the case, and while the regional district is responsible for covering 40 per cent of the cost of infrastructure builds, even if they have that money ready to start construction, the build requires provincial approval to proceed.
As a result, the attending electoral candidates were told that they will have to justify this necessary tax to residents, even when there isn’t any infrastructure to show for it.
“We need to be shovel ready on the project and we can’t wait with the delays that typically come up in these projects,” Hais said. “There has to be a new way to facilitate them and if we can find a new way to fund them we should be able to do that in a timely manner.”
jessica.durling@nanaimobulletin.com