Alberta’s health care system will get 1,100 new continuing care beds in an effort to improve care and reduce emergency room wait times.
The Alberta Health Services Board (AHS) released its 2010/11 budget on Wednesday, an $11.2-billion document that makes major investments in continuing care beds. It aims to add 3,000 new places over the next three years, including 1,100 this year.
The board has not yet identified where all of these new spaces will be added, but has committed $81 million to the project. Some 11 spaces have been identified for the Rosedale assisted living centre being built on Hebert Road and Arlington Drive.
There are 200 spaces identified in Calgary and 38 at a facility in Beaumont, but the province has estimated a large number of those as ‘pending.’
Dr. Stephen Duckett, CEO of AHS said the strategy is to move patients out of hospital beds and into continuing care, freeing up more space and allowing emergency rooms to admit patients more quickly.
“This is our first instalment. This is what we are going to do first and we expect to see a significant improvement in emergency department wait times.”
Duckett said the shortage of continuing care beds ripples down through the system, clogging up everything from cardiac units to emergency rooms.
“That is where we think we have the greatest shortage and it is evident by people ending up in acute care beds when we don’t actually think they need to be there,” he said.
The province also plans to open a medical assessment unit in Edmonton, complementing one in Calgary that also is designed to reduce emergency room waits.
The units take patients out of emergency rooms before they are ready to be transferred to hospital impatient units. They would be able to handle everything from orthopedic to cardiac patients.
Duckett concedes that could make them difficult to properly staff, but said the Calgary unit at Rockyview General Hospital is already working.
“We have tried it at Rockyview and it is going very well there. It is going on for a few months and now we are going to start it at the Royal Alex.”
In some cases, patients could be treated and released from one of these new units in the time people ordinarily might have to wait in an emergency room for an inpatient bed, Duckett said.
“Rather than just hanging around inappropriately in a trolley in the emergency room, you actually start the admission processes.”
David Eggen, executive director of the lobby group Friends of Medicare said the budget is certainly an improvement over last year’s cuts, but he believes the board might be concentrating on the wrong areas.
“If you deal with mental health and you deal with long-term care, you also deal with acute-care beds and emergency room waits.”
Eggen said focusing on long-term care specifically rather than generally on continuing care, which also includes areas like assisted living, would have done more to reduce pressures to the system.
The 2010/11 budget also pays off the roughly $1.3-billion deficit AHS had previously racked up. The money came from extra dollars that were allotted for health care in this year’s provincial budget.
Duckett said starting from an even level has made it a lot easier to draft a budget.
“If you look back at the media last year, basically all the stories were about how we had to cut things, because that was the budget we were given, we had to slam on the brakes.”
