A group of municipal officials from Calgary and surrounding communities is concerned temporary closures at Airdrie’s urgent care facility will have regional impacts.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) announced Thursday the urgent care facility at the Airdrie Community Health Centre will close temporarily on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. for eight weeks due a lack of doctors to fill shifts.
The temporary closures came up as an urgent discussion at Friday’s Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) meeting, which includes representatives from Airdrie, Rockyview County, Cochrane, Okotoks and Foothills County.
Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek called the situation in Airdrie “dire,” and said it would have an impact to neighbouring communities.
“We don’t have a north healthcare facility in our city. A lot of the residents from Ward 3 are accessing Airdrie for healthcare,” Gondek told reporters. “This has massive impacts on everybody in the region.”
Rockyview County councillor Kevin Hanson said the county “relies entirely” on urban communities for healthcare.
“There are no medical facilities in Rockyview really, that’s why it’s important that CMRB is standing firm in this and supporting Airdrie,” Hanson told reporters. “It’s a critical piece of regional infrastructure and it’s really no different than water, sewer, or anything else that we deal with as a board.”
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The CMRB said it is demanding a meeting with Alberta health minister Jason Copping.
“It is unacceptable that we are seeing urgent care closures like the one in Airdrie, on top of ambulance shortages and emergency dispatch issues,” Airdrie city councillor Heather Spearman said.
“The Minister’s office has contacted Mayor Brown and the Calgary Metropolitan Regional Board and is looking forward to continuing discussions regarding the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement to Global News.
According to the Ministry of Health, the closures in Airdrie are “a last resort,” and that AHS is working ensure local residents “continue to have access to the care they need during this time, and to keep all other services at the site operating as normal.
AHS said new patients will not be admitted at the site after 8 p.m., but nursing staff will remain in the urgent care centre overnight to assess and triage walk-in patients and help get them to another emergency facility if needed.
The Ministry of Health said there is a shortage of urgent care physicians, which it said is an issue being felt across the country.
The official opposition NDP said more needs to be done to address the issue.
“It is worse here than it is anywhere else in the country,” NDP leader Rachel Notley said. “We started from a better place, we are now falling farther behind the rest of the country because, only in Alberta, have we had to watch a government engage in a sustained attack on our public health care system.”
The health ministry statement said AHS is working to get qualified physicians to provide coverage for Airdrie, including “exhausting every avenue possible” by communicating the need to cover the shift amongst physicians.
“We want to see action,” Spearman said. “We want to see attracting nurses, we want to see healthcare workers of all formats, including physicians.”
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