Alberta hospitals running over 100% occupancy

Emergency Room wait times have been growing as hospitals continue to fill up, and some Albertans say waits are taking as long as seven hours.

One social media user on the public forum group Calgary Roast and Toast shared a post with a photo of her wait time at the Rockyview General Hospital.

“Roast to Hospital wait times. TOAST to all the doctors working through this literal healthcare crisis,” she said.

A screen shot from the Facebook group “Calgary Roast and Toast.” (Cass Kundart, Facebook)

The post generated over 90 comments, with various comments of sympathy, frustration, to compassion for those waiting and the doctors. One person noted that when they went to Foothills hospital, they were in “within minutes because I was having something that warrants going to emergency.”

“Lots of people are there for something they could go to urgent care for,” he said.

One Calgary ER doctor says emergency services’ hands are tied with the lack of resources hospitals have.

“The problem is that the hospitals are running at above 100 per cent occupancy,” said Dr. Eddy Lang, who is also the scientific director of the Emergency Strategic Clinical Network with Alberta Health Services (AHS).

“We are actually twiddling our thumbs much of the time, waiting for patients to come in from the waiting room. And that is what’s making us upset because, for some of those patients, it’s an inconvenience for them to wait. But some of those patients are getting into serious trouble and are having bad outcomes from preventable conditions as a result of prolonged wait times.”

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Lang says he has seen no increase in patient intake due to an outbreak or unusual spike in illnesses.

Meanwhile, he adds that Alberta’s healthcare system seems overburdened primarily due to capacity and a lack of hospital beds.

“Patients are in the waiting room that wants to see a doctor, but we can’t see them because we have no place to see them,” he said.

“Because our emergency departments are taken up by the admitted patients who are not getting a bed upstairs, we are unable to see the new patients in a timely manner, hence the long wait times to see the emergency physician,” Lang explained. “Unfortunately, they don’t go upstairs often for several hours, sometimes even for days, because there’s no bed for them to go to.”

To make healthcare more accessible for all, Lang says more resources are needed to combat the challenges doctors face.

“There must always be empty beds upstairs, in the upper part of the hospitals, so that the patients admitted in the emergency department have a place to go.”