‘What used to be a mass casualty event is now the new norm’: Alberta doctors say leadership lacking amid crisis of overcrowding in hospitals

Doctors who have been pleading for help as Edmonton hospitals are being overwhelmed by patients say Alberta’s healthcare leadership is missing in action.Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency room doctor in Edmonton, said he sometimes sees more than 100 people in the waiting room with 30 chairs, while others spill out into hallways or the ambulance bay.“People who can stand, stand. Some are on the ground and we’re hoping they’re alive. And you walk by this carnage, and then you start your day,” he said. He added that some wait all night to be seen by a physician.“What used to be a mass casualty event is now the new norm,” he said.Dr. Thirsk said a call earlier this week by the Alberta Medical Association to declare a state of emergency in healthcare aimed to spark a conversation about solutions for a system struggling to keep up with the demands of population growth. He noted one of Alberta’s four health ministries dismissed that call, saying it alone won’t help.“No one wants to be accountable for the disaster that’s happening, for the state of emergency that we’re asking to be recognized,” Dr. Thirsk said.“There’s no ownership when it gets diffused and obscured across ministries.” The plea from doctors came in the wake of a 44-year-old man dying in an Edmonton emergency ward on Dec. 22 after waiting almost eight hours for care, prompting the government to order a review.Physician Dr. Paul Parks, president-elect of the Alberta Medical Association’s emergency medicine section, which represents hundreds of ER doctors, said he’s hearing of “hundreds” of similar cases involving negative outcomes, including some deaths, from his colleagues.Dr. Parks said Alberta’s recent healthcare restructuring seems to have made it particularly difficult in Edmonton to coordinate between hospital providers, and he wants to see Acute Care Alberta step up.Acute Care Alberta is one of a group of new governing agencies created by Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government to replace Alberta Health Services, which was dismantled as the provincial health authority and relegated to being a hospital services provider.ACA governs hospital services under the hospital and surgical health services ministry.“Here we are in one of the worst access crises we’ve ever had for acute care across the province, and nobody’s saying a peep from government (ministers) or leadership,” Dr. Parks said.“There is nobody at the helm.”Maddison McKee, press secretary for Primary and Preventative Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, responded this week to the AMA’s call by saying 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. Comparisons to the pandemic emergency of 2020 are not based on evidence,” she wrote.Acute Care Alberta, meanwhile, said it’s working closely with service providers like AHS and Covenant Health, a Catholic healthcare provider.It said on Dec. 22, “escalation protocols” were initiated, temporarily pausing internal medicine patients being accepted in busy Edmonton-area hospitals from other zones in an effort to reduce capacity pressures.The organization said the special protocols have been on and off for most of the past year due to continued high demand for general internal medicine in the Edmonton zone. It said five “non-emergent” surgeries were rescheduled across Alberta in early January.“We recognize and appreciate that any cancellation impacts patients and families. All available clinical staff are working tirelessly to care for patients across the province,” the statement said.Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones declined an interview request earlier this week, but his office said in a statement to The Canadian Press that long emergency department wait times are a serious concern. Like other provinces, it said Alberta is seeing more patients being hit by the respiratory virus season.“We are cautiously optimistic that demand may ease as cases in the community stabilize especially in Calgary and Edmonton, but hospitals will remain busy throughout the season,” it said.In the Edmonton area, the ministry said hospitals are accelerating discharges and transfers when appropriate, opening surge spaces to deal with increased demand, and dedicating 336 beds for respiratory virus season.The ministry also pointed to plans to add 1,000 additional acute care beds and 1,500 continuing care spaces across the province.United Nurses of Alberta president Heather Smith said the current capacity squeeze is straining staff and increasing risk for them and their patients.In the Edmonton area, professional responsibility concerns have been escalating among union members, with 105 in the past six months coming out of emergency departments, she said.Health Sciences Association of Alberta president Mike Parker, representing 30,000 healthcare professionals, said there simply isn’t enough staff to meet the growing demand in Edmonton hospitals.“Fewer healthcare professionals are being asked to do more, for longer hours, and under increasingly difficult conditions,” he said in a statement.“That contributes directly to burnout, which only deepens shortages and leaves Albertans waiting longer for care in hospitals, health centres, diagnostic sites, and in communities across the province.”

‘What used to be a mass casualty event is now the new norm’: Alberta doctors say leadership lacking amid crisis of overcrowding in hospitals

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