Doctors say state of emergency needed in Alberta due to overcrowded hospitals
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According to some doctors, the situation in Alberta’s hospitals is so dire that the province needs to take drastic action.
Dr. Paul Parks, chair-elect of the emergency medicine section of the Alberta Medical Association, is calling on the provincial government to declare a state of emergency, at the urging of physicians across the province and hospital divisions.
“It’s reached a crisis point, where patients are dying in our waiting rooms and patients are suffering very bad outcomes because it’s unsafe,” he said in an interview Thursday.
As an example of this, Parks talked about the situation in Edmonton this week, where two patients were waiting in the emergency room’s offload waiting area for several hours — one for almost 72 hours and the other for more than 48 hours — to be admitted.
“We need to declare that this is a crisis – and tell us who will lead this response publicly, who will lead our province-wide disaster response-type team and help our teams get back to emergency and hospital care safely and in a timely manner,” he said.
The appeal of the state of emergency comes just weeks later A 44-year-old man in Edmonton died in the emergency room after reportedly waiting eight hours to see a doctor, The Alberta government has ordered a review of what happened.
“It’s daily carnage. It’s hard to watch the magnitude of human suffering,” Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency physician in Edmonton, said in an interview.
Thirsk has been a physician for 25 years and said what he’s seeing now at the hospital is the worst he’s ever experienced.
He said he believes Alberta’s growing — and aging — population has contributed to the situation and hospitals are running out of space. “It is the patients who will suffer,” he said.
Doctors at some Edmonton hospitals want the Alberta government to declare a state of emergency because they say emergency departments do not have enough capacity to accept patients.
“When there is no health care available to you because the beds are full, because the operating rooms are full, because there are no nurses, because there are no doctors, because there is no budget, you are waiting,” Thirsk said.
“I don’t think there’s a single unplanned medical event that people are comfortable waiting for.”
parameters of the state of emergency
According to Stephanie Montesanti, a health policy professor at the University of Alberta, declaring a state of emergency under Alberta’s Public Health Act would allow the provincial government to temporarily centralize authority and rapidly mobilize resources.
“Practically, this could enable quick funding, emergency staffing measures, rapid redeployment of beds and equipment to hospitals, patient transfers,” she said.
But Montesanti said such a declaration has limits.
“It doesn’t create more hospital beds or create more nurses, more doctors,” he said.
“A state of emergency is really just a temporary solution, right? It’s a tool, but it won’t solve the long-term, deeply rooted structural problems we’re seeing in the health care system.”
Provincial government response
Alberta’s Ministry of Primary and Preventive Health Services rejected a petition to impose a state of emergency.
Madison McKee, press secretary for the ministry, said, “The system is using all available resources; calls for a ‘public health emergency’ are misguided and will not add anything to what is already being done.” “Comparison to the 2020 pandemic emergency is not based on evidence.”
Hospitals and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones was not available for interview.
In a statement, the ministry, which is 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 coordinate at the provincial, regional and local levels so resources are available where and when they are needed,” the statement said.
It said that, in Edmonton, hospitals are implementing measures to preserve emergency room capacity and improve patient flow by expediting 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 Misericordia Community Hospital and Gray Nuns Community Hospital in Edmonton.
