The past year has seen massive strain out on the province's health system, with COVID, doctor shortages and paramedic red alerts dominating headlines.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
kking@medicinehatnews.com@kkingmhn
As Albertans adapt to the ‘new normal’ promised by officials throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, so too are provincial health-care workers attempting to navigate a system long teetering on the brink of collapse.
Pandemic
Alberta health-care workers raised the flag on threats to the province’s health-care system long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But the pandemic amplified those threats in ways unimaginable just years ago. And accelerated the deterioration – at points, outright destruction – of various pillars of the system.
Coming into 2022, hospitals in Alberta and across the nation were recovering from COVID-19’s deadly fourth wave and bracing for a fifth.
Spanning from late August, 2021 until the end of the year, the fourth wave was categorized by historically high ICU admission rates (ICU admissions comprised roughly one-fifth of all COVID-19 related hospitalizations at the time), which depleted the province’s health-care system of resources both material and human. And left it ill-equipped to handle the fifth wave, which began immediately following Christmas, 2021 and lasted until April.
While the fifth wave’s ICU admission rate was less than that of the fourth, the number of hospitalizations was significantly greater – peaking at 1,561 on Feb 1 – thus, forcing the province to reallocate resources and shuffle patients in an attempt to make room for the sick.
During this time, reports from hospitals across the province – especially those in larger centres – told of chronic bed shortages which resulted in waiting room assessments; space constraints which forced the overflow of patients into hallways; wait times long enough that at least one Albertan died before seeing a physician; and chronic staff absences as workers battled fatigue and illness of their own.
And even as the fifth wave began to peter out, a sixth hit, then a seventh. While vaccinations are beginning to mitigate severity of the waves, the system has had no opportunity to recover, and is still feeling the effects of the pandemic, in addition to routine ailments and seasonal illnesses.
Red alerts
While hospitals are ground zero of the pandemic, its effects are felt elsewhere as well.
Red alerts – or ‘code reds’ – have become a regular occurrence in Alberta.
A red alert is declared when no ambulances are available to respond to an emergency, signifying distress in the system. While data on the exact number of red alerts Alberta experienced since the beginning of is not publicly available, frontline EMS and officials with the province’s Health Sciences Association agree, the number is high.
But the physical availability of ambulances is not the main factor contributing to red alerts, say officials. Instead, citing EMS vacancies, which total more than 9,600 so far this year, and are largely fuelled by widespread burn-out, personal illness and poor working environment, say officials.
Physician shortages
A lack of physicians is also challenging Alberta’s health-care system, for much the same reasons, with the additional factor of retirement.
The issue of physician shortages is one which affects both urban and rural communities, hospitals and private practices.
While extreme outcomes include the forced closure of emergency rooms because there is no physician to attend – both the Bassano and Milk River health centres have experienced such closures this past year – the issue most often manifests as a lack of family physicians and community care providers to tend to non-emergent injuries and illness. It forces those in need of care to either travel to a different region, visit a local emergency centre or go without.
Provincial, municipal and health officials have all expressed intent to improve physician retention and attraction – a goal more favourable following the ratification of a two-and-a-half-year overdue contract between the province and physicians, and subsequent warming of relations between the two parties.
More to do
As Albertans adapt to the ‘new normal,’ health-care workers are suspended in a system rife with uncertainty, instability and abnormality. Those in the field say there’s no quick fix to the immense and interconnected issues it bears.
Notes
– 2022 saw the introduction of physician-led health clinics, two of which are in AHS’ South zone in Lethbridge and Brooks
– In October, two Medicine Hat physicians – Dr. Fredrykka Rinaldi and Dr. Paul Parks – were selected to lead the Alberta Medical Association as president and president-elect respectively
– Staying true to her promise to overhaul provincial health leadership, Premier Danielle Smith fired former Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw, followed by the Alberta Health Services board, however she kept on Health Minister Jason Copping.
