Alberta’s healthcare on life support, say advocacy group

Alberta’s healthcare system is in crisis, says Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Gallaway, who was in Lethbridge Wednesday to speak at the organization’s AGM.

Gallaway spoke to the Herald about the state of the healthcare system and what the organization is doing to advocate for it prior to the first in-person AGM for the organization’s local chapter.

“We’re seeing as much as half the city may be struggling to find a family doctor, but it’s not just doctors, all healthcare professionals are seeing burnout and short staffing throughout the system,” said Gallaway.

He said there are over 30 facilities in Alberta that have had bed or unit closures because of short staffing, whether that be urgent care, emergency care, surgeries, or acute care beds.

“Those are all still happening, they’ve been happening all summer and that’s because of a shortage of nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals we need to keep those facilities opened,” said Gallaway.

He said because of that, more people are trying to access care through emergency room and urgent care which is straining the system.

“Our EMS system has been on red alert forever at this point, most acutely in rural communities where their ambulances are off in the city responding to calls or responding from far distances,” said Gallaway.

He said all those issues combined put the system in crisis, and therefore there is an urgent need for action.

“We’ve been calling throughout this year for the government to take urgent action on this urgent situation by creating a workforce plan. We need to be looking at retaining the workers we have, recruiting people to enter the system and then training healthcare workers we need for the future,” said Gallaway.

He said that unfortunately the government is not acting on any of those steps.

“There’s discussion of the longer-term staffing needs. Paramedics have been calling for months and months, and we have a situation where a large percentage of our paramedics are on casual contracts that rolled over every 90 days, but they don’t have benefits, or sick days, or job security and meanwhile their shifts go on empty every single week,” said Gallaway.

He said the government continues to ignore suggestions on how to fix the problem and instead they attack those in the healthcare system.

“They attacked doctors, nurses and healthcare workers during the pandemic and proposed rates and cuts to their contracts. They’re driving people out of the system, when short staffing is their biggest issue,” said Gallaway.

He said they are not seeing any type of urgency coming from the provincial government to reverse the tide or deal with the issue at hand.

“Watching the leadership race for who will be our next premier, where healthcare was one of the main topics and nobody on that stage talked about actual solutions to healthcare,” said Gallaway.

He argues the problem is that we have a government whose ideology is to privatize, and they are using the current crisis as an excuse to say there is no other way to fix the problem other than to privatize.

Gallaway said there are many things that can be done and some of them are preventative measures to avoid further strain on the system.

“A huge percentage of our EMS calls are responding to overdoses and emergency rooms are seeing that as well. We should be removing that strain from the system by providing the services people need, things to save lives and remove that pressure from the system,” said Gallaway.

Gallaway will be speaking at the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs session today at noon, presenting Red Alert: Our Public Medicare is at Risk.