Emergency room wait times at hospitals outside of Calgary and Edmonton were not included in a wait times summary released by Alberta Health Services (AHS) last week because software used to collect the data doesn't exist at those facilities, said an AHS spokesperson.
"We are working toward ensuring that every hospital in the province is equipped with the software to be able to track this information. When that is done, we will have that information for other acute care facilities around Alberta," said Don Stewart.
The data tracked ER patients from the time they were seen to the time they were admitted into the hospital.
Last month, the government set a target to have 45 per cent of those patients seen, assessed, treated, stabilized and admitted into hospital within eight hours.
According to last week's summary, 21 per cent of patients at the Grey Nuns Hospital and the Misericordia were seen within the target time.
At both the Royal Alexandra and the University of Alberta hospitals, 28 per cent of visits fell within the target time and at the Stollery Children's Hospital, 64 per cent of visits feel within the target time.
The province also released data on the length of stay in the ER for discharged patients from the time they arrived until the time they were discharged.
AHS has set a target that 70 per cent of patients will be seen, assessed, treated and discharged within four hours by March 2011.
According to the summary, this target was reached 35 per cent of the time at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, 38 per cent at the University of Alberta Hospital, 65 per cent at the Grey Nuns Hospital, 67 per cent at the Misericordia and 75 per cent at the Stollery Children's Hospital.
Bulk of Sturgeon's ER patients are from Edmonton: physician
While AHS does not yet have detailed information on wait times at the Sturgeon Community Hospital, the facility's emergency room continues to be just as busy as some hospitals in the city, according to a long-time emergency room physician.
Dr. Daniel Hryciuk, who has worked at the hospital since the 1980s, said the majority of patients treated in the Sturgeon's ER are from Edmonton,
"Over 50 per cent of the ambulances that come to our emergency are from Edmonton and the patients have Edmonton addresses. A much smaller portion now are from St. Albert and the surrounding area," said Hryciuk, earlier this week.
He believes the Sturgeon should be funded as an urban hospital instead of being funded as a rural hospital, as it is now.
"We feel we sometimes get overloaded by their system. We are emergency physicians, we're very happy to take care of sick people but we feel we're kind of being left out of the urban hospital system by this designation of being an rural hospital."
Hryciuk says a central dispersal system, which tells paramedics where to take their patients, keeps tabs on wait times and the number of admitted patients in ER at hospitals in Edmonton, including the Sturgeon.
"If we have 13 emergency in-patients (EIP) in our emergency and the University of Alberta or the Royal Alex has 28, they look at us and say, the Sturgeon should be the place we take this person, but 13 out of 19 beds is a much higher percentage than 28 out of 55 beds," he said.
"The ambulance system considers us exactly the same as the Misericordia Hospital. It is part of their transport system and they transport the frail, elderly and the sick out to us, just like they would if we were an urban hospital."
Hryciuk said more than 50 per cent of the hospital's medical admissions — frail, elderly, and often sick people who end up needing other placements when they are discharged — are also from Edmonton.
He said this creates a real problem for emergency room staff because the facility is treated like a rural hospital despite the fact the emergency room offers the same services and is just as busy as city hospitals.
"We are considered by our colleagues exactly the same as all other full-time emergency physicians," he said.
