Quebec woman waits 9 years for medical appointment

Valentine Sicotte requested an appointment with a specialist at Saint-Eustache Hospital back in 2007. 

Last week, nine years later, she finally got a call back.

“I tried not to laugh on the phone,” she said. 

“I couldn’t remember even having requested the appointment. I told them to give my place to someone who needed it more.”

Sicotte was 19 when she requested the appointment with a gastroenterologist. 

‘It’s unclear why she wasn’t contacted for an appointment during all these years.’
– Alain Paquette

By the time she heard back, she was 28 and had managed to solve the problem herself through lifestyle and diet changes.

The local health authority, the Laurentians CISSS, couldn’t explain why it took so long to get back to her.

• Quebec makes dent in notoriously long ER wait times

“It’s unclear why she wasn’t contacted for an appointment during all these years,” said spokesman Alain Paquette.

“We really need to shine some light on this to better understand what happened. If indeed she was never contacted, this is unacceptable.”

The Laurentians CISSS says that the average wait time for an appointment with a gastroenterologist varies from a few days for urgent cases to several months for non-urgent cases.

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