Family of N.S. woman who died after 7-hour ER wait suing health authority | Globalnews.ca

The family of a Nova Scotia woman who died after a seven-hour wait at a Nova Scotia emergency room has launched a civil lawsuit against the province’s health authority.

Allison Holthoff, a 37-year-old mother of three, died at the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre emergency room on New Year’s Eve. Her husband, Gunter, told reporters in January his wife had been waiting in excruciating pain at the Amherst hospital.

“She said, ‘I think I’m dying. Don’t let me die here,’” he said.

Holthoff’s cause of her death has not been released, and the health authority is conducting a quality review investigation at the hospital’s emergency department.

In a release, Valent Legal said it filed the lawsuit against the Nova Scotia Health Authority with the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia on behalf of Holthoff’s family.

The lawsuit alleges the Nova Scotia Health Authority “was negligent in failing to meet the standard of care in operating the emergency room, monitoring the waiting patients, triaging the patients properly, and conducting appropriate testing in a timely manner.”

The lawsuit also names the attending emergency room physician as a defendant.

In the release, lawyer Mike Dull said Holthoff’s loss was “unimaginable and seemingly would have been entirely avoidable had reasonable care been taken to what was an obviously life-threatening situation.

“We hope that this legal action does two things: first, it provides this young family with acknowledgments of the failures and their resulting harms, and second, Allison’s death is not in vain,” Dull said.

“We hope the legal action draws attention to seemingly systemic failures and encourages decision-makers to take steps to ensure that a similar tragedy does not occur again in our province.”

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Global News has contacted the health authority for comment.

More to come.

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