Most frostbite amputation hospital visits in Edmonton last year were for homeless patients

Edmonton's unhoused population is disproportionately affected by amputations due to frostbite, accounting for more than half of such visits last fiscal year according to data collected by Alberta Health Services.

The data was obtained through a freedom of information request filed by Chris Wiebe, a lawyer representing the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights, who provided CBC News with a copy.

"It's important to quantify the impacts of houselessness and, we believe, in part the impacts of encampment evictions on the houseless community," says Wiebe.

The figures count the total number of health care visits where frostbite was diagnosed, and where there was an amputation performed along with a frostbite diagnosis. The data also separately breaks out those same categories of visits where the patient was recorded as being homeless.

The data shows that 58 per cent of frostbite amputation visits during the last fiscal year, involved homeless patients. That figure was an increase from 39 per cent the previous year. The fiscal year for the data runs from April to March. This means each year of data includes one full winter season.

Edmonton's homeless population was estimated at around 3,000 individuals during 2023 — about 0.3 per cent of the city's total population.

Sandy Dong, an emergency physician who has practised in Alberta for two decades, says the only surprise in the numbers is that the percentage of homeless patients isn't higher.

He says that may be a result of data entry error.

"Sometimes the chart may be inaccurate. Sometimes there's an address that's old," says Dong. "If anything, I think the number of homeless individuals represented here might be an undercount."

Last year, CBC News reported on data that showed a dramatic spike in frostbite amputations during the fiscal year of 2021-2022.

One of the differences between that data and these new figures, according to AHS, is how amputations are counted.

While the earlier data counted the number of times a computer code for amputation was entered, this new data reflects the number of visits where amputation was performed.

Because a patient might have multiple amputations during a single visit, the number of digits or limbs lost is not indicated in the new data. Similarly, because one patient might have multiple visits, the figures aren't necessarily an exact proxy for the number of individual people.

Kerry Williamson, a spokesperson for AHS, said in an email that the difference is simply due to how the data team chose to interpret each request.