Questions are being raised about the case of a 36-year-old Ontario woman who died of liver failure after she was rejected for a life-saving liver transplant after a medical review highlighted her prior alcohol use.
Using the most recent data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information on hospital bed costs (2016), Huska’s time at the Oakville hospital likely cost over $450,000 - ($3,592 per day for ICU care) with an additional 61 days in a ward bed which likely cost about $1,200 a day
A liver transplant in Ontario is pegged at about $71,000 to $100,000 in Ontario based on data from 2019.
“It’s a shame that so much money was spent keeping her alive under such horrendous circumstances and putting her family and her partner under such stress when the remedy was a lot cheaper and could have happened much, much sooner,” said Selkirk.
The survival rate of patients with alcohol-related liver disease who receive a deceased donor liver transplant has steadily improved to reach 80–85 per cent at one year after a transplant.
Can anyone make this add up?