Alberta needs to call state of emergency over crowded hospitals, physicians say

The state of affairs in Alberta hospitals is so dire that the responsibility needs to use up drastic process, according to some physicians.

Dr. Alice paul Parks, the president-elect of the section of emergency medicine with the Alberta Medical Association, is calling for the provincial government to declare a state of emergency at the urging of physicians from across the province and across hospital divisions.

“It’s gotten to a crisis state where patients are dying in our waiting rooms and patients are having very bad outcomes because it’s unsafe,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

As an example of this, Parks spoke about a situation in Edmonton this week where two patients were waiting for many hours in an emergency room offload waiting area — one for almost 72 hours and another for more than 48 hours — to be admitted.

“We need to declare it is a crisis — and tell us who’s publicly going to lead this response, who’s going to lead our provincial-wide disaster response-type team and help our teams get back to a semblance of safe and timely emergency and hospital care,” he said.

The appeal for a state of emergency comes just weeks after a 44-year-old man in Edmonton died after allegedly waiting eight hours to see a doctor in the emergency room. The Alberta government has since ordered a review of what happened.

“It’s daily carnage. The overload of human misery is tough to witness,” Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency physician in Edmonton, said in an interview.

Thirsk has been a physician for 25 years and said what he is witnessing in hospital settings now is the worst he has ever seen.

He said he believes Alberta’s growing — and aging — population has contributed to the situation and that space in hospitals has not kept up. It is patients who will suffer, he said.

Edmonton doctors want state of emergency due to ER overflow

“When there’s no health care available for you because the beds are full, because the operating rooms are full, because there’s no nurses, because there’s no doctors, because there’s no budget, then you’re waiting,” Thirsk said. 

“I don’t think that there is a single unplanned medical event that people are comfortable with waiting.”

A declaration of a state of emergency under Alberta’s Public Health Act would allow the provincial government to temporarily centralize authority and rapidly mobilize resources, according to Stephanie Montesanti, a health policy professor at the University of Alberta.

“In practical terms, it can enable expedited funding, emergency staffing measures, rapid redeployment of beds and equipment across hospitals, patient transfers,” she said.

But Montesanti said there are limits to such a declaration.

“It does not create hospitals beds or it doesn’t result in more nurses, more physicians, ” she said.

“The state of emergency is really only a temporary solution, right? It’s one tool, but it’s not going to address those long-term, deeply rooted structural problems that we’re seeing in the health-care system.”

Alberta’s Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services pushed back against the plea to invoke a state of emergency.

“The system is using all available resources; calls for a ‘public health state of emergency’ are misguided and would add nothing to what is already being done," said Maddison McKee, the ministry's press secretary. "Comparisons to the pandemic emergency of 2020 are not based on evidence."

Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones was not available for an interview.

In a statement, the ministry, which is more directly involved in hospital matters, said it values the perspectives of front-line physicians and maintains dialogue with health system partners to “strengthen” emergency care in the province.

“We are working closely with Acute Care Alberta and health-care providers to co-ordinate provincially, regionally and locally, so that resources are available where and when they're needed,” reads the statement.

It said that, in Edmonton, hospitals are implementing measures to preserve emergency room capacity and improve patient flow, by accelerating discharges and charges, limiting non-essential inbound transfers and opening designated surge spaces.

The ministry also pointed to plans for 1,000 additional acute care beds, with new bed towers at Calgary's South Health Campus, and at the Misericordia Community Hospital and the Grey Nuns Community Hospital in Edmonton.

Senior reporter

Julia Wong is a senior reporter based in Edmonton.

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