Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi is calling on Premier Danielle Smith to reconvene the Alberta legislature five weeks early, saying her government needs to take accountability during a crisis of hospital overcrowding.
Nenshi says major hospitals operating at 102 per cent capacity is “not normal” and says the province needs to declare a state of emergency until capacity becomes manageable.
“This is not just ‘it’s a bad flu season.’ This is an unprecedented crisis in our emergency rooms and our ambulance services, symptomatic of a system that is broken down,” he said Tuesday.
“We need the premier to answer questions.”
Calls for urgent measures have intensified since the death last month of a man who waited nearly eight hours in an Edmonton emergency department.
Since then, doctors have compiled front-line horror stories of preventable deaths and patient suffering in a recent letter to the government. It described emergency department hallways and waiting rooms as “death zones.”
Nenshi told reporters the province needs to restore a centralized provincial command structure he said was broken during Smith’s recent dismantling of the previous provincial health authority, Alberta Health Services.
Hospitals Minister Matt Jones has said the province doesn’t need to declare an emergency because it has the necessary tools. He has said its agencies are working together with providers to address the capacity squeeze.
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In an update last week alongside top health-care agency officials, Jones acknowledged the province has been dealing for weeks with “significant pressures,” including higher volumes of respiratory illness, population growth, and aging patients with more complex needs.
When asked about the chain of command, Jones noted government, its agencies and providers co-ordinate on a daily basis.
“There is no one person who runs a $28-billion complex integrated health-care system,” he said.
“There is provincewide co-ordination. There always has been, there always will be,” he said, crediting that work, and the work of front-line professionals, for avoiding mass surgical cancellations during the bulk of the respiratory virus season.
Dr. Brian Wirzba, president of the Alberta Medical Association representing doctors, said earlier this week that when integrated operations rely on collaboration and consensus, “no one owns it.”
“Without clear authority, progress will stall when swift decisions are needed most,” Wirzba said.
The government has announced a triage liaison physician program launching Feb. 1 to expedite care in emergency departments, and has pointed to longer-term hospital expansion plans.
Still, Nenshi Tuesday questioned whether the government is doing everything it can to channel patients where they need to go.
“For example, could we expand the use of urgent care centres and walk-in clinics, fund those to be open 24/seven? That lives within Primary Care Alberta, but it has an impact on acute care,” he said.
The NDP has long pointed to the government’s decision in 2024 to halt work on a new south Edmonton hospital.
Nenshi said had that planning not been cancelled, a hospital could be opening right now, accusing Smith’s United Conservative Party government of systematically defunding infrastructure during a time of population growth.
Jones has acknowledged there should be more hospital capacity in Edmonton and Calgary.
“Yes, I believe that there could have been greater capacity built in the years — and decades, frankly — prior to today, but the government deals with competing priorities across the board,” he said last week.
Jones was to take questions from reporters at an announcement in Calgary Tuesday afternoon.
— More to come…
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