ER doctors skeptical as province rolls out physician triage program

The long-promised triage doctors are now working at six Alberta emergency rooms, but Edmonton's busiest ER doesn't have one.

Alberta doctors say the province’s new triage liaison physician (TLP) program won’t be enough to reduce emergency room wait times.

Premier Danielle Smith announced on her radio show over the weekend that six hospitals – three in Edmonton and three in Calgary – now have TLPs working in their respective emergency rooms.

TLPs work directly in ERs alongside nurses to assess patients earlier.

The province promised new TLPs in January after the death of Prashanth Sreekumar, a 44-year-old husband and father who died while waiting hours for treatment at the Grey Nuns ER in December 2025.

“Anyone who walks into an overcrowded waiting room or hospital, or is waiting for health care in any part of the system, recognizes that we’re short,” said Warren Thirsk, an ER doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital (RAH) and former president of emergency medicine at the Alberta Medical Association (AMA).

“We need to start doing the work: build the hospitals, train the people. Train the physicians, nurses, allied health-care workers. Let’s get people looking after people and stop talking about it.”

TLPs are existing physicians who have signed new contracts to take on an additional clinical role, which Louis Hugo Francescutti, a University of Alberta professor and ER doctor at the RAH, said will be hard to fill with physicians already burnt out and overworked.

“It is an onerous task because you are working in a waiting room with patients that are undifferentiated, and if the nursing support and the lab support isn’t there, then you’re really putting yourself at great risk of liability,” said Franscescutti.

“People also have to remember, these TLPs are not going to create any beds … they’re not going to make up for the lack of capacity in the system right now.”

Francescutti added that to create space in the ER, they need to move unhoused folks seeking shelter to proper living arrangements and ensure patients have better home care.

“As it’s getting colder, we know a lot of our inner city population shelters in the emergency department. Why don’t we come up with a better solution for them?”

The RAH has the busiest ER in western Canada, said Francescutti, serving the inner city as well as northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories, but doesn’t have any TLPs yet.

Smith said delays in contract negotiations with the AMA on operational detail associated with TLPs pushed back the rollout by 11 months.

The premier said Paul Parks, who was the AMA president of emergency medicine during negotiations, “derailed consultations.”

“As soon as he left, we got a deal,” said Smith on her radio show Saturday.

Parks announced earlier this month that he is now running for Alberta’s New Democrats in Cypress-Medicine Hat.

Smith accused Parks of using his position to “advance a partisan cause” and interfere with negotiations.

However, Thirsk said he was president during TLP negotiations.

“Parks took over from me in September 2026, long after all of these proposed negotiations and failures,” said the ER doctor in an interview with CTV News Edmonton. “If the premier wants to blame someone, I guess they’re blaming me as I head off to work.”

NDP’s Sarah Hoffman spoke to reporters Monday afternoon, saying she is hopeful the TLPs will make a difference.

“It might be a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, but at least it’s a little step forward,” said the shadow minister of hospital and surgical health services. “It’s definitely not enough.”

After speaking with health care-professionals, Hoffman said she has proposed a three-pronged approach to addressing delays in Alberta’s ERs by removing people from the hospital who don’t need to be there, making sure everyone who is eligible for vaccinations can get them, and increasing hospital capacity.

There are currently 25 physicians enrolled in the program filling shifts at the University of Alberta Hospital, Misericordia Community Hospital, Grey Nuns Community Hospital, Sturgeon Community Hospital as well as sites in Calgary. TLPs will soon be operating at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, Foothills Medical Centre and Peter Lougheed Centre once more physicians join.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Kenny and Nicole Lampa