Infrastructure not enough to save health-care system: ER doctor

Alberta's minister of hospitals says he doesn't believe a list of deaths and near misses in ERs is representative of the state of the health-care system.

Following a government announcement of the completion of the Peter Lougheed Centre expansion in Calgary, one Alberta doctor says infrastructure isn’t enough to address the province’s health care capacity woes.

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“The announcements are falling short in the sense that they forget that people look after people,” said Alberta Medical Association (AMA) emergency medicine president Warren Thirsk Tuesday.

Thirsk is also an emergency room doctor in Edmonton at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, one of 16 major hospitals in the province that are operating at 102 per cent capacity.

“Announcing solid building infrastructure is one part of the system, but it’s not the full system, and we don’t have the people to look after people,” he said.

Matt Jones, Minister of Hospitals and Surgical Health Services, was in Calgary Tuesday afternoon, announcing the completion of the $151-million Lougheed hospital expansion, which will add space for 97 new patient beds, including 28 emergency room beds.

“I think additional capacity always helps, and this is also modern and new, so it will support better flow and efficiency of care,” said Jones at the announcement.

“And in response to staffing, we’ve been actively producing and recruiting health-care professionals. Year-over-year, we’re up about 1,000 RNs (registered nurses), LPNs (licensed practical nurses), and health-care aides and over 600 physicians,” added Jones. “Alberta is doing comparatively quite well.”

The expansion is planned to be operational by late February.

There are currently eight other hospitals in Alberta that are currently under construction, including the University of Alberta’s brain centre neurosciences intensive care unit, the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre and its interim cardiac catheterization lab, the La Crete Maternity and Community Health Centre, ICU expansion at the U of A, the Bridgeland Riverside Continuing Care Centre, the Chinook Regional Hospital renal dialysis, and the Gene Zwozdesky Centre at Norwood.

Minister of Infrastructure Martin Long said there are an additional 11 projects in planning and design phases.

“I don’t have a total on the number of beds that will create for net new, but that will be something we’ll be talking about with the health ministry on a go-forward basis,” said Long.

The minister did say that 1,000 new bed spaces are “being contemplated.”

Jones said he met with physicians who have shared concerns about how patient care is impacted by pressures on the health-care system.

“We want to work with everyone to make the system better and improve care,” he told reporters. “I want to be very clear: if someone requires critical care, urgent care, they should seek it, and they should have confidence that they will get it.”

Documents obtained by CTV News Edmonton detailed several deaths and dozens of near misses in Alberta hospitals. The document was sent to provincial officials.

But Jones said he doesn’t believe the situations in the document – which were anonymized – are an accurate representation.

“The anonymized, unverified data that was shared is concerning to me,” said Jones. I don’t feel these anonymized cases are representative of the incredible care that our system and our frontline health-care professionals provide on a day-to-day basis.”

The document described hospital hallways and emergency waiting rooms, which are filled with patients, as “death zones.”

Thirsk says the daily toll of overcapacity in hospitals is taking a “massive” toll on patients.

“It’s wrong, frankly,” said Thirsk. “The waits have ballooned to places that are ridiculous … that’s not fair to the person and it diminishes and ignores their pain and suffering.”

He added that health care is a resource, not a commodity.

“It is a resource that all of us as human beings will require at one point or another … and the tap is empty, the pipes are broken.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Connor Hogg