A Surrey, B.C. woman says her elderly mother didn't get the health care she deserved at a Lower Mainland hospital and insists she was put into a storage closet inside the facility.
Mary Nesbitt brought her 83-year-old mother, Lily May, to Surrey Memorial Hospital with a serious leg infection last Friday.
After waiting in the emergency ward for several hours, Nesbitt says her mother was finally moved to what turned out to be a former storage room.
"When I brought her in, she was in a wheelchair until 7:30 and then they put her on a stretcher," she told CTV News.
"They admitted her and she went into a cubbyhole I know used to be a storeroom. She stayed there for 24 hours."
The mother was then moved to Delta Hospital, but when she arrived, there was no bed available and special arrangements had to be made to look after her.
Fraser Health has apologized to the family of the elderly woman for the crowded conditions at Surrey Memorial.
However, doctors say she was not kept in a storage closet - but she was accommodated in a short stay unit. Fraser Health admits some of the rooms are quite small.
Surrey Memorial is one of B.C.'s busiest hospitals, with over 70,000 patient visits per year.
