Kelowna Patient Rides Electric Scooter Home After Cab Denial

UPDATE: A 23-year-old Kelowna, B.C. man was forced to ride an electric scooter home after a cab company denied him transportation following a dialysis treatment on October 12, 2023. Dyson Durocher-Galloway, who suffers from kidney failure, faced a frustrating ordeal when the cab he was expecting failed to arrive.

Normally, Durocher-Galloway’s transportation costs are covered by the Ministry of Health. However, a mix-up left him stranded after the dispatcher at Kelowna Cabs refused to send a cab, citing a lack of an account number—an essential detail he never received. “The dispatcher just wouldn’t send one because I didn’t have my account number,” Durocher-Galloway expressed. “But I was never told one at the start.”

With no backup plan and feeling exhausted from his treatment, Durocher-Galloway had no choice but to ride a Lime e-scooter home. “It just felt like it went on forever, and each road felt longer and longer,” he recalled, highlighting the physical toll of dialysis. His mother, Amanda Durocher, was shocked when he arrived home on the scooter. “I was sitting on the front steps and he rolled up on one of the Lime scooters and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, what is going on here?’”

Kelowna Cabs acknowledged the situation was due to a rare system outage, which prevented them from dispatching account-based rides. “From my understanding, the dispatcher tried to explain to him that our systems were down,” said Roy Paulson from Kelowna Cabs. “We could not do any account trips… because we have to be accountable for every account.”

The company stated they attempted to contact the Durocher family afterward but did not receive a response. Paulson admitted that contingency plans were lacking in this instance but expressed openness to implementing improvements. “Now that it’s being brought into the light, I don’t think there would be a problem with having a second system in place,” he added.

Amanda Durocher hopes this incident will lead to the establishment of better protocols to ensure that no other patients face similar difficulties in the future. “Maybe for them to implement some procedures or protocols in a situation like this,” she suggested.

As of now, Global News has reached out to the Ministry of Health for a comment on this troubling situation. The urgency of improving transportation services for vulnerable patients is clear, as Durocher-Galloway’s experience has highlighted significant gaps in the system that need immediate attention.