The Alberta government has announced a public fatality inquiry into the death of a father in an Edmonton hospital emergency room last month after he waited eight hours to see a doctor.
Prashant Sreekumar, who was 44, died in the ER of Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Hospital on Dec. 22, 2025. He was waiting to be seen for chest pains and ultimately died of cardiac arrest.
READ: Wife of Edmonton man who died in ER speaks out
“While system level improvements are underway, a detailed independent and public review of how this specific case was managed also needs to be undertaken,” Matt Jones, the minister in charge of hospital and surgical services, told a news conference Thursday.
“We owe that to his family and to all Albertans.”
Jones says he ordered the inquiry because he was left with “concerns and unanswered questions” after an internal review into the case. The minister did not clarify what those concerns were exactly, despite being asked numerous times. He acknowledged that system pressures at the Grey Nuns Hospital played a role.
“I am not in a position to explain to the public exactly why this happened,” he said. “There’s a number of contributing factors, no doubt, but that is the job of the fatality inquiry. It would be inappropriate for me to speculate with incomplete information on what occurred.
“But I do believe, based on the information I’ve reviewed to date, that it does warrant the escalation to a fatality inquiry.”
The Alberta Medical Association is calling on the province to declare a state of emergency in health care, as the province’s 16 largest hospitals are operating at over 100 per cent.
At Thursday’s press conference, health officials recognized the extreme strain on Alberta’s emergency rooms and hospitals during an exceptional respiratory illness season.
Craig Gillespie, a lawyer representing the family, said the inquiry will help, “but this doesn’t change what they are experiencing … and the devastating loss they are experiencing now and going to experience forever.”
The inquiry into Sreekumar’s death will to examine the circumstances of the death and issue public findings and recommendations to help prevent similar deaths in the future.
Alberta previously ordered Acute Care Alberta and Covenant Health to jointly review the circumstances leading to Sreekumar’s death after his wife called for an investigation. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner conducted a separate investigation.
Two other people had died in the hospital’s emergency department on the same day, though the circumstances of those deaths are unclear. Officials said Thursday that the two individuals were actively receiving treatment before they died but declined to be more specific, citing privacy rules.
Patrick Dumelie, the chief executive officer of Covenant Health, the organization that operates the Grey Nuns hospital, said the internal review made recommendations to improve care at the hospital but didn’t give details.
“We are in 100 per cent alignment and committed to implementing them,” Dumelie said, standing alongside Jones at the legislature news conference. “We commit to honouring the lives of those lost by responding with seriousness, urgency, accountability, as the situation demands.”
At Sreekumar’s funeral two weeks ago, he was remembered as a loving husband and father of three, and a hard worker who had strong values.
He moved to Canada from India as a teenager with his parents in 2002, in part because of the country’s reputation for strong health care. One of his first jobs in Canada was in Alberta’s health-care system.
–With files from The Canadian Press