'Dire straits': Emergency room doctors call for state of emergency in Edmonton zone

Citing the heart attack death of a 44-year-old Edmonton man while in ER at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital and long waits in emergency rooms, some doctors are calling for the province to declare a medical state of emergency.

Dr. Paul Parks, president emeritus of the Alberta Medical Association, said the demand for care is currently “outstripping the ability to supply it.”

“In medicine, we call that a disaster,” Parks said. “It’s a medical disaster now that we have in the front lines.”

According to Dr. Raj Sherman, who works in the ER in Stony Plain, one issue that is continuing to plague the system is patients in the hospital needing long-term care.

“We have 650 people in the Edmonton zone in hospitals who are fragile seniors. They’re not sick, but they need home care, transition care, rehab care, hospice care, assisted living, and about 30 per cent need long-term care,” Sherman said.

“When they’re occupying hospital beds upstairs, we can’t move sick people for emergency upstairs where they belong.”

On Thursday, at the University of Alberta (U of A) Hospital, there were 57 admitted patients with complaints that could range anywhere from pneumonia to stroke or sepsis or a broken hip—and 14 pending consults—in an emergency department with 65 beds.

At the Misericordia, 56 admitted patients and five pending consults—in an emergency department with 55 funded beds.

Numbers at the Royal Alex and the Grey Nuns were similar.

“They’re running the university as a major trauma center out of chairs, hallway and waiting for medicine,” Sherman said of the situation at the U of A.

“Edmonton has 275 ER beds, and yesterday, of all those ER beds in the five hospitals, we had 255 admitted patients to those beds,” he added, calling the overall situation a “flow process” problem.

Flu season preview

Back in August, charts showed Edmonton hospitals were at 100 to 113 per cent occupancy, in advance of respiratory virus season.

“The system was already redlining in August before the flu hit,” Sherman said.

But it’s not just about a vicious flu season, Parks said.

“Yes, influenza has stressed, basically a broken system, to break it even worse. We knew it was coming for months. We told them it was coming. They knew the southern hemisphere influenza strain was really bad this year. They have it in the summer. So we knew it was going to hit hard,” Parks said.

“We’ve been begging them to, you know, really decant and offload and do some of these provincial solutions before influenza hit. Of course, our government actively dismantling and destroying public health and vaccination access didn’t help as well and made it worse.”

In a statement to Postmedia, the Ministry of Hospital and Surgical Health Services thanked health care professionals for their hard work and dedication to patient care.

“We acknowledge that long emergency department wait times remain a serious concern. Like other provinces, Alberta is experiencing higher patient volumes due to respiratory virus season,” the statement reads. “An early and unusually large flu spike in mid-December added pressure to hospitals with more patients requiring care and hospitalization that we’re currently seeing.

“We are cautiously optimistic that demand may ease as cases in the community stabilize, especially in Calgary and Edmonton, but hospitals will remain busy throughout the season.”

‘Edmonton has got it the worst’

At the U of A, according to a government chart, 10 per cent of ER patients admitted are spending 50 hours in the emergency department before they go up to a room.

At the Misericordia, 10 per cent of the time, they’re spending over 88 hours—four days—in ER before going up to a room.

Those numbers are lower in Calgary, where some patients may still spend over 24 hours in ER before getting to a room.

“From time presentation to getting an ECG, to giving antibiotics for serious infections, to painkillers for broken bones and severe pain, we are not meeting the time standards of care that we should be meeting. And I believe Edmonton is probably the worst off in the whole country right now. Every system is struggling, but ours is in dire straits right now,” Sherman said.

“Both systems are in crisis right now, but Edmonton has got it the worst. So we are not calling for a province-wide state of emergency, we’re just calling for the Edmonton zone, because we can no longer provide safe care in a timely fashion to critically ill patients.”

jcarmichael@postmedia.com

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