A northern Alberta senior thought she was going into cardiac arrest. The medevac cost her $29K

There is no grocery store, post office or doctor's office in remote Fitzgerald, Alta.

The northern community is more than 700 kilometres northeast of Edmonton on the Slave River, near Wood Buffalo National Park. The only year-round road out of Fitzgerald links it to the Northwest Territories.

The closest town with services and health care is Fort Smith, located just across the border in N.W.T., about 25 kilometres to the northwest.

Beverly Tupper, a 78-year-old Fitzgerald resident, recently learned that while an Alberta health care card covers doctor visits in N.W.T., it doesn't cover everything.

In September 2023, Tupper went to the health centre in Fort Smith with an atrial flutter. Her heart was beating at more than 200 beats per minute. 

As a former public nurse, she knew it could eventually lead to cardiac arrest. 

"It was really frightening," said Tupper, who was a guest on CBC's Radio Active Health Care Checkup earlier this month.

She was sent to Edmonton on a medevac flight — a trip that would cost her $29,000.

Due to wildfires, many northern communities were evacuated at the time Tupper got a medevac, including Fitzgerald.

"There were no physicians in Fort Smith, because they all had been evacuated," she said.

A statement from the office of Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said that while Alberta has reciprocal billing agreements with other provinces to cover necessary hospital and physician services, ambulances and medevacs from other provinces or territories to Alberta are not covered.

That type of coverage is not a requirement under the Canada Health Act, the statement said. It added that no other provinces or territories fund air ambulance services across borders.

The province recommends people purchase travel medical insurance if they have plans to travel outside Alberta. 

But that doesn't make sense for people who need to cross a provincial border to access basic services, Tupper said.