Alberta reports worsening ER waits

Alberta Health Services has released dismal wait-time results as critics pan the government’s long-term emergency room waiting goals as unambitious and modest.

As part of a stated commitment to transparency, AHS has released online its first weekly report showing the number of times emergency patients had been tended to within eight hours at hospitals in Calgary and Edmonton.

For the last week of October in Calgary, among patients who were later admitted, doctors were able to meet the eight-hour target between 21 and 64 per cent of the time, with figures varying widely between hospitals.

In Edmonton that week, the target was met between 24 and 55 per cent of the time.

The national benchmark is for that target to be met 90 per cent of the time.

"My first impression is that I’m very happy that Alberta Health Services has decided to make their processes more transparent. That was one of the things I had asked for," said Felix Soibelman, president of the Edmonton emergency physicians association.

"On the surface, this web page is quite encouraging, but when you look at the details on the web page, a lot of things are missing there."

In particular, Soibelman points to the government’s long-term health targets, which state the AHS plans to meet the eight-hour target 90 per cent of the time by March 2015.

"My first reaction is that that’s not aggressive enough," he said. "What if they’re happy with 45 per cent for the next two and a half years, and next year, after the election, there is still the majority of the work to be done?"

Roman Cooney, a spokesman for the AHS, said the government is addressing those concerns.

The 2015 time frame was first published in 2009, he said. And the government is revising that target.

"That’s part of our current long-term strategy, which was developed several months ago, before we began to ramp up to reduce our emergency department wait times," Cooney said. "What you’re going to see is that we will be setting new, far more aggressive wait time targets in consultation with Alberta Health and Wellness. . . . We’re still nailing down the time frame for hitting that 90 per cent target.

Cooney said the AHS is also hoping to use new technology to increase transparency. Discussions are underway to introduce a daily, or even real-time system to monitor wait times.

"We don’t have the technology right now, but that’s what we’re driving toward."

But for Liberal Leader David Swann, promises of tighter targets are not enough.

"We’re talking about a five-year time frame to get reasonable emergency room rates. That is just totally unacceptable," he said. "I think one to two years is a maximum that Albertans should be dealing with Third World conditions."

Swann placed the blame for ongoing problems in the health system at the foot of former health minister Ron Liepert, who amalgamated the regional health boards into a super-board in 2008.

"I hold him primarily responsible for this devastating condition in our health-care system. Instead of adding beds and improving the emergency room crisis, he blew up the system and just made everything so much worse."

Cooney said AHS is working to improve emergency wait times and adding more continuing-care beds.

"The question is how do we accelerate all of those initiatives so we can hit that 90 per cent target much, much sooner. You’re going to see actions within the next six to eight weeks. We’re going to be opening more community-care beds and hospital beds in the next few months, and over the next two to three years."

The number of hospital beds slated for funding has been an ongoing controversy within the health-care system. Up to 2,000 new beds have been promised by 2013. However, critics have noted the province is still suffering as a result of Ralph Klein-era health-care cutbacks that removed 1,500 beds from the system in the 1990s.