Doctors urge Alberta to cancel more surgeries to ease pressure on crowded emergency rooms

Some doctors are questioning why Alberta isn’t canceling more surgeries to free up hospital beds and ease pressure on struggling emergency rooms.

Six non-emergency surgeries across the province this month have been rescheduled due to hospital capacity problems, according to health officials.

have been doctors alarm for weeks about overcrowding in emergency rooms and has told the province declare a state of emergency To address the situation.

“We are in an absolutely unprecedented disaster,” said Dr. Paul Parks, chair-elect of the emergency medicine section of the Alberta Medical Association.

Doctors say many ERs are filled with patients who are already hospitalized but cannot be moved to wards because there are no beds available, leading to overcrowding and longer wait times.

“If we can cancel some scheduled surgeries, shift some of the newly admitted patients to surgical beds in the hospital, we might get some relief and save some lives,” Parks said.

The Government of Alberta has ordered review A man died in an Edmonton emergency room in December, reportedly after waiting nearly eight hours to see a physician.

According to Parks, Edmonton hospitals are under the most strain. But he said Calgary facilities are also under pressure.

Dr. Braden Manes, former interim vice-president of Alberta Health Services, called the number of surgeries canceled this month “surprisingly low.”

“In a situation where you have packed emergency rooms, six seems like a very small number of canceled surgeries,” said Mains, a professor of medicine and health policy at the University of Calgary.

And he questioned whether the numbers provided to CBC News accurately reflect the situation.

“If that’s true then I think we’ve made a conscious decision that we’re not canceling surgeries because of the logjam in the emergency room,” he said.

According to Mains, health officials have a limited number of strategies to help ease the pressure on hospitals, including transferring patients out of the area, treating people in hallways and boosting homecare support to keep people at home longer.

Delaying elective surgeries is a last resort, but it could help free up beds and reduce ER bottlenecks, he said.

“I guess I would have thought we would see more cancellations of elective surgeries to help emergency rooms so we can avoid more situations like we saw with the young man who died over the holiday season.”

Both doctors said that in previous years, when hospitals struggled with capacity problems, far more surgeries would have been postponed.

No emergency surgery will be canceled

As of Friday morning, six non-emergency surgeries have been rescheduled in January, according to Acute Care Alberta, one of the four new provincial health agencies. That number includes surgeries that were scheduled to occur during that time period.

“Acute Care Alberta continues to work closely with service delivery organizations such as AHS and Covenant Health to support individual sites in making decisions regarding patient load and procedures such as surgery,” spokeswoman Jennifer Vanderlaan said in an emailed statement.

“It is important to note that any emergency surgery, including serious cancer and pediatric cases, will not be delayed.”

the agency said 318,920 surgeries were performed in Alberta during the 2024 -2025 fiscal year.

“We recognize and appreciate that any cancellation has an impact on patients and families,” VanderLaan said. “All available clinical staff are working tirelessly to care for patients across the province.”

A spokesman for Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones said the early and unusually large flu spike in mid-December increased pressure on hospitals, with more patients requiring care and hospitalization.

“We are cautiously optimistic that demand may subside as cases in the community stabilize, particularly in Calgary and Edmonton, but hospitals will remain busy throughout the season,” press secretary Kyle Warner said in an emailed statement.

He said overcapacity protocols are in place, surge beds have been added, staffing has been increased and virtual hospital support has been added.

changes in health system

Parks said that in the past, when AHS served as a single health authority, it coordinated care across the province.

“They would have had a much better picture of what was happening, they would have heard frontline health care leaders pleading for help and they would certainly have canceled surgeries scheduled by now and a lot of them,” he said.

The government’s health restructuring led to the creation of four health ministers, four main provincial health agencies and seven regional health corridors in the province. Also premiered by Danielle Smith Vows to return decision-making power to individual hospitals,

Alberta Health Services is now placed in the hospital provider role alongside organizations such as Covenant Health, and reports to Acute Care Alberta.

“There’s no authority right now that can do this in a really coordinated way,” Parks said.

For its part, the Alberta government said there have been no policy changes related to the cancellation of surgeries, and it stressed that provincial monitoring remains in place.

“Decisions about surgical scheduling are made by clinical teams at individual sites based on real-time conditions, supported by provincial coordination through Acute Care Alberta,” Warner said.

“This includes daily cross-provider meetings, shared dashboards and twice-daily reporting to ensure system-wide alignment.”

Warner said the province is working to reschedule procedures as quickly as possible.