Alberta needs to call state of emergency over crowded hospitals, physicians say

The situation in Alberta hospitals is so dire that the province needs to take drastic action, according to some physicians.

Dr. Paul Parks, the president-elect of the section of emergency medicine with the Alberta Medical Association, is calling for the provincial government to declare a state of emergency at the urging of physicians from across the province and across hospital divisions.

“It’s gotten to a crisis state where patients are dying in our waiting rooms and patients are having very bad outcomes because it’s unsafe,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

As an example of this, Parks spoke about a situation in Edmonton this week where two patients were waiting for many hours in an emergency room offload waiting area — one for almost 72 hours and another for more than 48 hours — to be admitted.

“We need to declare it is a crisis — and tell us who’s publicly going to lead this response, who’s going to lead our provincial-wide disaster response-type team and help our teams get back to a semblance of safe and timely emergency and hospital care,” he said.

The appeal for a state of emergency comes just weeks after a 44-year-old man in Edmonton died after allegedly waiting eight hours to see a doctor in the emergency room. The Alberta government has since ordered a review of what happened.

“It’s daily carnage. The overload of human misery is tough to witness,” Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency physician in Edmonton, said in an interview.

Thirsk has been a physician for 25 years and said what he is witnessing in hospital settings now is the worst he has ever seen.

He said he believes Alberta’s growing — and aging — population has contributed to the situation and that space in hospitals has not kept up. It is patients who will suffer, he said.

“When there’s no health care available for you because the beds are full, because the operating rooms are full, because there’s no nurses, because there’s no doctors, because there’s no budget, then you’re waiting,” Thirsk said. 

“I don’t think that there is a single unplanned medical event that people are comfortable with waiting.”

A declaration of a state of emergency under Alberta’s Public Health Act would allow the provincial government to temporarily centralize authority and rapidly mobilize resources, according to Stephanie Montesanti, a health policy professor at the University of Alberta.

“In practical terms, it can enable expedited funding, emergency staffing measures, rapid redeployment of beds and equipment across hospitals, patient transfers,” she said.

But Montesanti said there are limits to such a declaration.