St. Albert’s MLA is cautiously optimistic that a recently announced emergency room-based pilot program in Edmonton could have some beneficial results for EMS service in this city.
On Oct. 16, Alberta Health Services announced a pilot program that will change how EMS crews transfer patients to two hospitals’ emergency rooms, at the University of Alberta Hospital and Royal Alexandra Hospital.
Dubbed rapid transfer units, they’ll open in the next six weeks and include eight to 15 beds, plus adding stretcher capacity and additional clinical staff, an AHS press release notes.
“I’m willing to see how the pilot goes,” said St. Albert MLA Stephen Khan.
Paramedics are required to wait with their patients until the transfer occurs, which can hold crews up at the hospital. AHS also said to address this in other Edmonton and Calgary hospitals, patient care is being consolidated under one EMS crew that looks after two to three patients in an effort get more ambulances back on the road.
Khan is hopeful that there might be positive impacts for St. Albert-based ambulances, but said pilots are important to see if the theory works in real life.
“My general reaction is we need to address some of the issues around response time, particularly in our community,” Khan said, noting he’s heard anecdotally of issues here, and been lobbied by city council around concerns over EMS.
Kerry Towle, Wildrose MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, questioned why it took until last week for a solution to be sought.
“The timing appears to be very convenient,” she said, noting that new Health Minister Stephen Mandel is seeking a seat in the upcoming byelection.
Frontline workers are doing a “fantastic job” in a broken and under-resourced system, Towle said. She was concerned they aren’t being consulted on changes like this.
That sentiment was echoed by Elisabeth Ballermann, president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, the union that represents many of the emergency medical service professionals in the province.
“Anything that’s going to help get crews back out on the road we’re going to be supportive of,” she said, but noted that her union was not consulted on these changes.
“Having raised the issue it would have been nice to have at least a heads-up that they were making that announcement. They chose not to, so we were reading about it in the news release,” Ballermann said.
A survey of HSAA workers released in late September showed a declining morale and a range of concerns, with the majority of respondents in the Edmonton metro and suburban rural north region saying that wait times at hospitals with patients have deteriorated.
Ballermann did note St. Albert EMS workers wouldn’t have been included in the survey since St. Albert contracts with AHS to provide ambulance services through the fire department.
John Church, an associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta who looks at health politics and policy, said the changes are likely in response to pressure due to media coverage of the emergency system.
“They’re putting these things in place because there’s been a characterization recently in the media that the emergency system is on the verge of catastrophic collapse,” Church said.
Church suggested that implementing more non-emergency urgent care facilities that have evening or weekend hours would be helpful.
“To me it would make sense that whatever they’re trying to do to increase the flow through the emergency room, they should also be doing something to decrease the flow to the emergency room,” he said.
