Since Ontario gave the option to their patients to opt for assisted death, more than 630 of the citizen chose to end their lives at hospitals, legally helped by a nurse or a doctor. This option is not available in the hospitals which are religiously tied with the Catholic Church.
Since all the hospitals, including the ones which are religious, are funded and public health centers, they must have this option available. Currently, Ontario law states that if a person or institution wants to not offer the option of assisted death, they facility which holds the patient must transfer him to another one willing to offer this option. The same goes for the option of abortion.
The issue is that very ill and in pain patients will be traumatized if they are moved so that they could end their lives.
Ontario citizens don’t know the name of the facilities which approve or don’t approve “Dying With Dignity” option and they won’t provide the information either.
There are places such as Alberta, where a lot of hospices or hospitals don’t accept to offer patients a medically assisted death, so they provide a transfer and must regularly publish reports on how many patients had to find another health care institution to get medically assisted death.
Hospitals such as St. Michael’s, St. Joseph’s and Providence from Toronto will not provide the option of medically assisted death. Also the same goes for Toronto Grace Health Centre.
There are four health centers at Toronto’s University Health Network which offer this option and stated this policy on their website. Hamilton Health Sciences is also an option for the patients who opt for ending their lives under medical assistance.
The health Minister, Eric Hoskins declared that the public will have access to a staff which will monitor and help them to find an institution which provides medical assistance in dying. He also stated that this procedure is mostly done at the house of the patient, with medical assistance.
