UCP pushing health care to the brink

By Lethbridge Herald on July 23, 2022.

AT THE LEGISLATURE
Shannon Phillips – NDP MLA for Lethbridge West

Summer has hit and, with it, farmer’s markets, summer camps, music festivals and, of course, heatwaves. As southern Albertans revel in all manner of warm-weather activities, COVID numbers are rising again as the Omicron BA.5 variant continues to make its rounds, now that restrictions have eased off and summer festivities are in full swing.

But it isn’t just folks across the province who are getting sick: Alberta’s healthcare system is also under the weather. Hospitals, doctors, frontline health workers, and pre-hospital care have been and continue to be pushed to the brink, and they are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver basic care across our province, putting patients at further risk. This is all the inevitable and devastating result of UCP decisions, whose 2020 lay-offs of up to 11,000 Alberta Health Services workers, and their decision to tear up the provincial government’s master-plan agreement with family physicians, have now resulted in a threatened and collapsing provincial healthcare system.

All across the province, paramedic shortages are afflicting the functioning of timely emergency services, while available ambulances are strained and often unable to reach individuals during emergencies. Just recently, a seriously-injured toddler in Calgary was transported to Alberta Children’s Hospital by fire truck due to the unavailability of ambulances. 

AHS confirms this as their recent data reveals a significant increase in red alerts in the province’s capital, meaning a lack of ambulances available to respond to emergencies in Edmonton. In January of this year, there were over 1,200 red alerts in Edmonton alone, and this number will increase, as COVID numbers continue to rise and other heat-related illnesses increase during the hot months. Surrounding municipalities have resorted to responding to Edmonton’s red alerts, sometimes instead of attending to emergencies in their own communities.

Meanwhile, people in Lethbridge are experiencing the same shortage of emergency services with many folks calling and emailing my office, imploring for something to be done about the overwhelmed emergency rooms, unreasonable wait times for EMS, not to mention the sheer lack of family doctors and closures to rural hospitals and clinics.

Forcing Albertans to wait in anguish, wondering if an ambulance will be available to help them or their loved ones during an emergency is simply unacceptable. Yet these ambulance delays and unavailabilities are growing in frequency due to the incompetence of the UCP and Health Minister Jason Copping in particular, who, rather than attending to the EMS crisis here at home, chooses instead to globetrot across Europe, continuing to disregard the deepening disaster that is Alberta’s healthcare. Rather than focusing on real issues of real Albertans, the UCP government engages in an elaborate and expensive debate club on European approaches to healthcare all while ignoring patients and healthcare workers in its own province.

This new level of desperation in emergency services is a direct result of the shameful changes that the UCP have made to AHS, which include withholding $7 million from the ambulance budget. The fact that this is all happening on the heels of a 39-year-high inflation and a rapid rise in the cost of living—with increases from school fees, and property and income taxes to skyrocketing utility bills and gas costs—is deplorable. Not only are families struggling to put food on the table, pay their energy bills, and afford insurance on their homes and vehicles, many also don’t have access to a family physician. 

So, in addition to everything being more expensive for the average Albertan family, which is directly linked to the UCP’s privileging of energy corporations and the private sector, those who are already stretched to their financial limits are being forced to find costly means to out-of-town doctors or opt to wait at the ER for hours on end. The UCP have proven they are at war with our healthcare system and thus the average Albertan. This is clearly a government that cannot be trusted. They must be held to account so that Alberta’s healthcare system can be repaired.

If you have also experienced excessive delays or ambulance unavailabilities, please

contact my office by calling 403-329-4644 or by emailing  lethbridge.west@assembly.ab.ca. We want to hear what you have to say.