New evidence that hospital pressured to axe doctor who criticized Ford government on pandemic

Posted on March 29, 2022 in Governance Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion
March 29, 2022.   By Bruce Arthur, Columnist

It sure looks like Brooks Fallis paid a price for advocacy in one grotty corner of this system.

In a pandemic it’s easy to lose track of what happened, and where we’ve been. It’s been more than a year since Dr. Brooks Fallis was suddenly fired in January as interim head of critical care at William Osler Health System, in the hardest-hit part of Ontario. Fallis was respected and admired by peers and employers. He was also a passionate, incisive critic of the government’s pandemic response. One was given more weight by his bosses than the other.

“I think this is important,” says Fallis. “Not because of me, or even because of Brampton, per se. But it’s important.”

When Fallis was fired, it seemed clear at the time that the hospital had reacted to government pressure, whether applied or implied. As first reported by the Star, the entire Osler critical care staff signed a letter strongly objecting to his demotion, and Fallis was told by hospital leadership his advocacy had put funding for the hospital — funding controlled by the provincial government — at risk.

Saturday night Fallis spoke to CTV’s W5, and presented even more direct evidence that his hospital felt pressure from government to terminate him from the job.

“Maybe I’ll get in trouble for this but at this point it doesn’t really much matter: this came from very high, very high up, well beyond the hospital as I understand it,” said Dr. David Borts, Osler’s chief of medicine, in a phone call shortly after Fallis’s firing, aired on W5. “It’s the politics. The ministry was unhappy, and above.

“That’s how these guys play the game, and whether you like it or not, they’re the paymasters. These guys can be nasty in a way that you don’t even know they’re being nasty.”

“Please understand that 99 per cent of the work that you’re doing, we’re very, very happy with,” says then-Osler CEO Naveed Mohammad, in a different meeting aired by W5. “I’ve been warned a number of times that these guys in the government have a very, very long memory. These guys remember. That’s the first thing we’re afraid of.

“The second thing is to Doug Ford’s credit, this guy regularly picks up the phone and phones (chief of staff Dr. Frank (Martino) and I.”

In a post-firing meeting with Martino and medical affairs head Dr. Rardi Van Heest, Fallis was told the hospital’s funding was at risk; Fallis also alleges Martino told him Ford had called Mohammad directly to complain after Fallis’s criticism of the province’s reckless attempt to raise the restrictions thresholdson Ontario’s public health measures plans, against Public Health Ontario advice.

Ford and his office have always denied contacting hospital leadership. When asked for comment Monday, premier’s office press secretary Alexandra Adamo said, “At the time of his claims, the Office of the Premier had never heard of this individual. His allegations remain categorically false. William Osler has already publicly acknowledged that at no time has the premier’s office ever given any direction or advice relating to human resourcing matters at the hospital.”

To be clear, Fallis never said the premier called the hospital; he merely said he was told so by hospital leadership, which then changed its story. After one guest column in Healthy Debate in September 2020, the hospital communications team created a plan to reach out to government in stages: the local MPP, the ministry of health and Christine Elliott’s office, the premier’s office, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown’s office, and the chair of the hospital board. In November 2020, after hospital complaints over media appearances, Fallis and Osler leadership came to an agreement that he would no longer represent himself as a representative of William Osler.

And then Fallis gave a TV interview on Friday, Jan. 14, 2021 in which he stated — correctly then, correctly now — that funding ICU beds did not create commensurate ICU staff, following a provincial photo-op on beds. The following Monday Fallis was told he was out of the job. And on the Friday, he was told why.

“There’s just no conceivable way that two of the most senior people in the hospital reached the decision to withdraw my contract on a Saturday, and then when I meet with them six days later on a Friday, they’ve completely lost track of the facts,” says Fallis.

Again, he is not complaining. Fallis stayed on at Osler to help transition his replacement into the role, stayed through the third wave, and is still gainfully employed as an ICU doctor at a different hospital. But he lost a job where he was an asset to the community under tremendous pressure, and excelled. It sure looks like Fallis paid a price for advocacy in one grotty corner of this system, under a government with a fondness for pressure and whose media allies regularly attacked government critics in the pandemic.

It’s easy to say this is just how power works, but especially in a pandemic, should it? Multiple doctors have told me they preferred not to openly criticize the government due to what happened to Fallis. Funding as a pressure point would also explain why hospital CEOs were so universally circumspect even as their institutions were, and are, put under pressure.

“I think it’s important in three big ways,” says Fallis. “The first is doctors and other health-care professionals have the ability to advocate on behalf of patients, and on behalf of the communities they serve. And if that advocacy is felt to lead to potential disciplinary action, it’s going to disappear.

“The second is in a universal health-care system, you can’t be in a scenario where the hospital is adjusting how they behave based on the threat of losing capital funding … the hospital system belongs to everyone, not the government of the day.

“And the third reason, and the one that like I feel quite strongly about, is we see around the world that good democracies are a fragile thing. The Trump era in the U.S. and the challenges being faced in Europe: it’s not easy, and if you start to let things slide and allow governments to use heavy-handed pressure tactics on their own public institutions in an effort to muzzle dissenting opinions, to me, that’s a massive problem. And equally, if people just say don’t push back against it, then we all lose out on that.”

In fairness it’s not Jan. 6 at the Capitol, but it’s one tree in what seems like a forest. Brooks Fallis isn’t complaining, but then, he never was. He’s just doing what he’s done all along: point out bigger problems, and hope somebody listens. Maybe we will.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2022/03/29/new-evidence-that-hospital-pressured-to-axe-doctor-who-criticized-ford-government-on-pandemic.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a07&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=0C810E7AE4E7C3CEB3816076F6F9881B&utm_campaign=top_115070

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