2018–2020
The events themselves. A transfer of care on a physician’s retirement, a change in the clinic’s operations, an appointment in January 2019 that no longer appears in my chart, and care ending in 2020.
This is a personal account by a former complainant. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. To make a complaint, or to read the College’s own material, go to cpsm.mb.ca.
My complaint to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba was closed 180 days after it was received — by a staff decision, before it reached the Complaints Committee. Because no committee decided anything, no finding existed, and no review or appeal attached to it.
I cannot tell you how often this happens. Neither can anyone else. That is the point.
A reason that stops at “the record is gone” produces the same outcome whether it was misfiled, lost in a system migration, or destroyed on purpose.
I am not saying any of those things happened in my case. I do not know, and neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else. The doctor was asked and confirmed the record is gone. Nobody asked how it got that way. That is the point: the reasoning I was given contains no step that would find out. It treats the recoverability of the document as the only question, and once the answer is no, the file ends.
So consider what that means as a general rule. If the standard response to a missing record is that investigating cannot bring it back, then a record going missing carries no regulatory consequence and prompts no inquiry into how it happened. Accidental loss and deliberate destruction arrive at the same door and get the same letter. A patient cannot tell them apart, and neither can the regulator, because nobody asks.
And there is a likely, boring explanation available here. My appointment falls at the seam of a change in the clinic’s operations, and records lost during clinic transitions and electronic record migrations are a well-known failure. But notice what follows from that. If migrations routinely lose patient records, that is exactly the pattern a regulator would want to detect — and exactly what a process that stops at “it cannot be recovered” will never see. The mundane explanation does not make the question less worth asking. It makes it more.
The stakes are highest where care is gated by an assessment — a referral or evaluation whose written result determines whether a patient gets access to treatment at all. There the record is the only proof the gate was opened, on what basis, and by whom. Lose it and the patient cannot show what was decided, cannot seek a second opinion on the reasoning, and cannot correct an error inside it.
What I cannot tell you. Whether complaints are often closed this way. Whether the College’s known delays and its closures at intake have anything to do with each other. Whether my file was typical or unusual. I have one file, and I am not going to pretend it is data. No one outside the College can answer those questions, because the numbers are not published — not how many complaints are received, not how long they take, not how many end before a committee ever sees them. That absence is the reason I am asking rather than asserting, and it is the first thing I would change.
A regulator whose mandate is protecting the public should treat a missing record as something to investigate, not as a reason to stop investigating. How a record went missing is a question about conduct, and it survives the loss of the document.
The events themselves. A transfer of care on a physician’s retirement, a change in the clinic’s operations, an appointment in January 2019 that no longer appears in my chart, and care ending in 2020.
The College receives my complaint. Two issues: a missing appointment record, and how the transfer of my care was communicated to me.
The first exchange of correspondence about the file appears in the record — roughly two and a half months after it was filed.
The physician’s written response reaches the College. Nearly four months after the complaint. The College’s published process says a response is expected within 30 days.
The College writes to me, and I reply in writing over the following days, as the process invites me to.
The College writes to close the file. It acknowledges an initial delay in processing. It states the missing record is confirmed missing and not recoverable, and that additional investigation will not change that fact or its outcome.
180 days from receipt to closure
These are its own descriptions, from its public complaints pages. Solid markers are steps my file reached. Dashed markers are the steps it never got to. Most of the process ran. One step did not, and it is the step that produces a decision.
I want to be fair about this. Three of the four steps happened. My complaint was sent to the doctor, I received the response, and I replied to it. What never happened is the last one — the referral to the Complaints Committee for a decision. That is not a formality. Review and appeal rights attach to a decision. Without one there is no finding to disagree with and nothing to take anywhere else.
The College’s published process guide says complaints may be dismissed when they are deemed trivial, vexatious, or unsustainable under the Regulated Health Professions Act, that complainants are given the reasons, and that a dismissal may be appealed to a panel of the Complaints Committee.
My closing letter gave reasons. It said the College would not pursue the matter further. It did not mention an appeal, or name the provision it was acting under.
The College itself, in a sworn affidavit later filed in court, describes what happened as a decision of the Assistant Registrar, Complaints and Investigations Department, to decline to investigate the complaint. So there was a decision, made by a named official, declining to investigate. What the letter never said is what rule that decision was made under.
So I do not know which route my file took, and I could not have known from the letter. If it was a dismissal, the published appeal to a Complaints Committee panel should have been available and should have been disclosed to me. If it was something else, I would like to know what, and whether that route carries any review at all.
This is the question I would put to any regulator that closes a file on you: name the provision, and tell me what review it carries. It is a short question and there is no good reason not to answer it.
In September 2025, CBC News reported on a Winnipeg man who had waited about a year on a complaint alleging serious harm, and who was asking the College and the province for changes so complaints are dealt with sooner. He wanted the province to require the College to report publicly on its staffing and backlogs. The province's response was that the College is self-regulating and that government does not direct its investigations, while noting the College has a clear mandate to protect patient safety.
I have one file and he has one file. Neither of us can see the pattern, because complaints closed without a committee decision generate no published record. That is the reporting gap he was asking to close, and it is the reason I am publishing mine.
I never asked the College to produce the record. I asked it to look at how a record came to be missing and how the change in my care was communicated. Those are questions about conduct, and they were answerable whether or not the document could be found.
I also do not know whether what happened to me meets the definition of patient abandonment. I am not asserting that it does. I am saying that in 180 days no committee ever decided anything about it, so there is no finding to disagree with and no decision to take anywhere else. What bothers me is not that I lost. It is that I never entered.
“Has my complaint gone to the doctor for a response, and has it been referred to the Complaints Committee?” The answer tells you whether any appeal right can exist yet.
Ask in writing for the section of the Act or bylaw relied on, and what review or appeal that route carries. A dismissal and an administrative closure are not the same thing and may not carry the same rights.
Put the question in writing as its own numbered issue: not “produce the record” but “how did this record come to be missing, and what is being done about it.” Make it hard to answer the easier question instead.
A complaint will not recover a document. In Manitoba, a written request to the clinic or trustee under the health information legislation is the route for the record itself. Start that track first, and keep the refusal or the reply.
Frame everything as a regulatory outcome. Proposing terms involving the physician directly can be read as using the complaint as leverage, and can end the file on its own.
Every six weeks. Phone calls disappear. A written follow-up builds a record of the delay that nobody can dispute later.
I have made a written request under The Personal Health Information Act to the trustee holding my records, asking for the January 2019 record, a description of what was searched, the applicable retention and destruction policy, and the record of user activity for my chart. A trustee has 30 days to respond.
I have made a parallel request to Manitoba Health for my physician claims history, which would independently show whether a service was billed for that date.
If the record turns up, I will say so here plainly. If it does not, the response will show what was actually searched — which is the question the College never asked. Either way this page will be updated with the outcome.
None of these require anyone to agree that my complaint had merit. They are about what happens to the next complaint.
The Law Society of Manitoba already has this. When a complaint about a lawyer is concluded by a staff decision without going to its Complaints Investigation Committee, the complainant can ask an independent Complaints Review Commissioner to look at it. That reviewer can order an investigation or direct that the matter go to the committee. A Manitoba physician complainant whose file is closed the same way has no equivalent.
Ontario’s Health Professions Procedural Code requires a panel to dispose of a complaint within 150 days of filing. Manitoba sets no comparable deadline in statute. Mine took 180 days, and the physician’s response alone took nearly four months against a published expectation of 30 days.
How many complaints are received, how long they take, and how many are closed before reaching a committee. None of that is published, so no complainant can tell whether their experience is ordinary or unusual — and neither can anyone overseeing the system. A complainant asked the province for exactly this reporting in 2025.
The first two exist elsewhere in Canada, and one of them exists in Manitoba for a different profession. This is a gap in the framework, not a mystery about what a solution would look like.
Mine took 180 days from the day the College recorded receiving it to the day it wrote to close it. The College says completing the whole process can take several months and that it aims to be timely without sacrificing thoroughness. In September 2025, CBC News reported on a Winnipeg complainant who had waited about a year.
No. The College’s published guide says complaints may be dismissed when they are deemed trivial, vexatious, or unsustainable under the Regulated Health Professions Act. A file can also be closed without ever reaching the Complaints Committee, which is what happened to mine.
The College’s guide says a dismissal may be appealed to a panel of the Complaints Committee, and that complainants are given the reasons for dismissal. If your file is closed without a Complaints Committee decision, ask in writing which provision it was closed under and what review that route carries. My letter did not say.
In my case the College’s position was that the record was confirmed missing and not recoverable, and that additional investigation would not change that or the outcome. If you need the record itself, a regulatory complaint is the wrong tool — request it from the clinic or trustee under Manitoba’s health information legislation.
CPSM is a self-regulating body. When asked about complaint delays in 2025, the province said it does not direct the College’s investigations, while noting the College has a mandate to protect patient safety.
In September 2025, CBC News reported on a Winnipeg complainant who had waited about a year on a complaint to the College and who asked the province to require reporting on staffing and backlogs. This is a different file, and it raises a different question.
The question I would want answered: of the complaints CPSM receives each year, how many are closed before reaching the Complaints Committee, and how has that number moved as its delays have been reported? I do not know, and I have no way to find out. The College holds those figures.
What is new: delay is only part of it. My complaint was closed by a staff decision before it reached the Complaints Committee. Because no committee decision was made, no review or appeal attached to it, and the closing letter did not identify the authority it was made under. Manitoba appears to have no independent review of such closures for physician complaints — while the Law Society of Manitoba provides exactly that, through a Complaints Review Commissioner, for complaints about lawyers closed by staff.
Documents. I hold the complaint, the College’s correspondence, the closing letter, and the record filed in court. These are available to journalists on request. I have not posted them here because some are marked confidential and one names a physician I have chosen not to identify.
Contact. [ your name ] — [ your email ]. Available for interview, on the record. Anything on this page may be quoted.
What I will not discuss: the identity of the physician, or the clinical details of my own care. The story I am raising is about the complaints process.
What this page is. One complainant's account of one file, drawn from correspondence I hold, plus material the College publishes on its own website. Where I am giving an opinion, it is marked as an opinion.
What it is not. It does not name the physician and makes no allegation about the care I received. I am not alleging that anyone destroyed a record. The section on gated care describes how such care works in general; it is not a description of any particular patient's file, including my own. This is not legal advice.
Corrections. If anything here is factually wrong, write to me and I will correct it on this page.