Family’s $500K donation an investment in local health care

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 6, 2025.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Shilpa Stocker and her family know how important quality health care is.

Due to family experiences, they’ve come to know that timely health care can be critical for one’s well being.

In honour of their late mother, Stocker, her sister Mayuri Modgill, and their her father Champak Morzaria, recently made a $500,000 donation for the construction of the Southern Alberta Cardiac Care of Excellence at Chinook Regional Hospital.

The ambitious project to raise $30 million by the winter of 2027 was begun last year. Fundraising efforts last month saw $644,000 generated at the Bringing Hearts Home gala. The donation by Stocker and her family bring the amount raised in just a few short weeks to more than $1.1 million.

“We found it an ideal opportunity…we were looking for something to do in her memory after she passed,” Stocker says of her mom. “She was incredibly family-oriented so this is something we could do as a family for other families.

“The thing that really resonated with me is the stress we’re putting on the system, not just for heart patients but others.”

Stocker and family made the donation because they believe quality cardiac care is needed here in southern Alberta so residents don’t have to travel to Calgary.

In an interview this week, Stocker said it’s not just about care for patients suffering from cardiac issues – as her father has at times – but also preventative care.

Funds raised will mostly go towards upgrading CHR and the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, with the cardiac catheterization lab here as well as equipment including a Cardiac CT scanner, Cardiac MRI machine, electrophysiology laboratory, echocardiography laboratories at both facilities, specialized beds at both facilities and cardiac monitors for service expansion at both facilities.

That $30 million will also cover the costs of other specialized equipment, including mechanical ventilators, cardiac stress testing machines, resuscitation monitors and defibrillators, patient lifts and dialysis machines.

Stocker says while the provincial government is also financially supporting the centre, she and her family believe for cardiologists and other specialists to be attracted to Lethbridge, it’s essential that the South Zone community show their own personal support for the centre.

And that’s what they hope in part to achieve with their donation: convincing others in the area to step up to the plate and help out as well.

Stocker thought the centre would be a good fit for her family and, after her mom died in January of 2024, she sat down with her dad and sister to talk about doing something in her memory.

“She never needed the cardiac services in town of any kind, but she needed a lot of care in the last few years of her life,” Stocker said of her mother. “And one of the things that hit me the most when I heard (local cardiologist Sayeh Zielke) talk about the benefits of a cardiac centre was not just the fact it would be good to have people from admission to discharge, but the fact that people were being transported” to Calgary for care.

“So one of the things that hit home for us is every time my mom, for her issues, needed care, we had an ambulance come. So the thing that kind of got to us was what if an ambulance wasn’t available because there was a patient being transported to Calgary? Or alternatively somebody had to wait longer because they were caring for her? And so the one thing we talked about was not having a cardiac care centre means that we’re putting pressure on the system with our growing population. Not just on ICU beds and the health care staff here but we’re also putting pressure on the system in terms of getting people the care they need.”

When she looked at the statistics on heart issues in southern Alberta, Stocker said that puts pressure on the system here as well as in Calgary.

Those statistics are alarming. Deaths from all cardiac issues in southern Alberta are 26.6 per cent higher than in the rest of Alberta. And there is a 15.5 per cent higher risk factor of heart attack in southern Alberta than the rest of the province. The death rate in southern Alberta caused by diseases of the circulatory system is 35.2 per cent.

About 1,300 local patients have to travel to Calgary to get interventional cardiology support and treatment.

“If you’re an outpatient, you’ve got a family member to take you to Calgary or if you’ve been taken to Calgary” somebody needs to bring a person back to Lethbridge and rural areas, which Stocker says puts stress on families as well as patients.

“Are we providing the optimal care for people? Is that the best way to do it? Whereas if we had from admission to discharge, now as a family or as a patient, I believe I’m getting the best care possible,” added Stocker.

“To me, we’ve got to get this thing here…we’ve got a lot of people we need to look after,” Stocker said of residents in the region.

The city now has the ability to attract cardiologists, said Stocker, recalling when her dad first began having heart issues. He saw an internal specialist, not a cardiologist, because there wasn’t one in the city.

It’s hoped the cardiac care centre will transform health care in the area, said Stocker, noting everyone in her family has received high-quality care here, “but I think the best available can be better.”