Alberta Health Minister Stephen Mandel has announced $50 million for emergency-room upgrades in the province, but there will be no direct benefit to Sturgeon Community Hospital.
The funding was announced Wednesday morning as part of a three-pronged effort to reduce pressure on the provincial health system in general, and emergency rooms in particular. Three hundred new restorative care beds will also be added in Edmonton and Calgary, and there will be changes to the EMS mandate as well.
“The fact is we need to take the pressure off the system,” Mandel said. “The E.R. issue is a matter of flow into the hospital, and if people can’t move effectively out of the emergency rooms into the hospitals then they can’t move through the system.”
Overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms and overall lack of capacity has long been an issue in Alberta hospitals, with data released by NDP Leader Rachel Notley last month showing incidents of overcrowding are on the rise in Edmonton-area hospitals, including the Sturgeon.
Mandel said the health system has unlimited needs and with limited resources available, decisions were made to direct the emergency-room improvements in places where they were most needed right now.
“We hope if we can meet those needs we’ll be able to use those residual funds in areas like St. Albert, like Stony Plain,” he said. “There are lots of needs.”
Alberta Health Services CEO Vickie Kaminski explained while there’s no plan at this point to spend money for structural changes in the Sturgeon hospital emergency room, changes in other hospitals will nonetheless reduce the strain in St. Albert.
“Sturgeon is often the recipient of patients that just simply can’t be accommodated in some of the other emergency departments because they’re already so full,” she said. “As we make these improvements and are able to expand their offering, then we should see some relief right through the system.”
Mandel also announced 300 new “restorative care” beds, which he said will be spaces where patients who aren’t ready to go home yet but no longer need acute care will be able to get the appropriate level of care rather than going directly into long-term care beds.
“The goal of the program is to more effectively and expeditiously move patients into the most appropriate care setting,” he said.
While the provincial budget, scheduled to be released March 26, is expected to include significant cuts, Mandel said front-line care wouldn’t be affected, but rather the money would be found through other organizational efficiencies.
“We’ve committed to maintaining front-line service,” he said. “What that’s going to look like might be a bit different, but the patient is the No. 1 individual in our concern.”
