UCP HEALTH CARE

'Disastrous overcrowding': Alberta emergency doctors say ERs facing brunt of health-care pressure

Emergency doctors say mounting pressure on Alberta’s health-care system has created unprecedented emergency room wait times.

Alberta Health Services EMS ambulances are seen near the

 University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday- Edmonton Journal

Dr. Paul Parks, president of the section of emergency medicine in the Alberta Medical Association, said in an interview with Postmedia a high volume of patients and depleted staff has contributed to “disastrous overcrowding” in emergency rooms.

Parks said specialized hospital in-patient units are often full, so some patients admitted to an emergency department space with a significant illness can’t be transferred, in turn increasing wait times for new arrivals, something he called “access block.”

“Our wait times and our access block and our overcrowding is worse than it’s ever been,” he said, adding the strain has been significant for months but has only grown worse.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Alberta Health Services (AHS) was reporting estimated wait times of more than three hours at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, the Misericordia Community Hospital, and the Grey Nuns Community Hospital, and more than six hours at both the University of Alberta Hospital and the Northeast Community Health Centre.

Parks said the situation is not unique to Edmonton hospitals.

“All of the big emergency departments across the province are really struggling, and we’re just the canary in the coal mine — we’re the warning system of when things aren’t working in the entire system,” he said.

Parks said Albertans who need emergency medical care shouldn’t be discouraged from going to ERs, but called on the government to be more transparent and respond with help and a plan.

“A medical disaster is when the demand outstrips what we can supply … and that’s what’s been happening in our emergency departments regularly,” he said.

Kerry Williamson, a spokesman for AHS, acknowledged in a statement ERs are facing “significant” pressure because of high volumes of seriously ill patients and the impact of COVID-19. That impact includes more people needing hospitalization, while infection control measures limit admissions and more staff are absent.

He said more people are seeking care after deferring it over the past two years, and ERs are also seeing more patients with influenza-like symptoms.

Steve Buick, press secretary to Health Minister Jason Copping, said in a statement emergency departments and other services are under strain across Canada for the same reasons.

He said the government is spending $1.6 billion more on health care than the previous government did in 2018-19, but the strain on the workforce over the past two years means staff are struggling to keep up with patient volumes.

“The pressure on the hospitals will ease as the current Omicron BA.2 wave passes and the number of COVID-positive admissions drops, as well as the number of staff away due to COVID,” Buick said.


Dr. Shazma Mithani poses for a photo in Edmonton on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022.

Dr. Shazma Mithani, an emergency room physician in Edmonton, said in an interview the “care deficit” of the past two years is a big part of the problem, along with short-staffing in in-patient units, but the trickle-down effect on emergency rooms could have been much better mitigated.

“The wait times that we’re seeing now are completely unprecedented,” said Mithani, adding that while published AHS estimates might be a snapshot in time, they’re consistently high, day after day.

Mithani said if every Albertan had access to a family doctor or pediatrician, their health-care conditions would have been better managed and many ER visits would have been preventable.

“We would not be in the situation we are in right now,” she said.

Williamson noted AHS has 270 more staff working in emergency rooms now than a year ago, and over the past two years, the province has filled more than 2,000 vacancies for registered nurses.

AHS has also tried to help fill staffing gaps by hiring 1,188 new nursing school grads, but Mithani said in critical care, that can create challenges without more experienced nursing staff.

lijohnson@postmedia.com