Today, NDP Health Critic David Eggen released AHS documents showing that the province could open 400 closed beds across the province tomorrow, if they would only fund and staff them.
“The number of unused hospital beds in this province is appalling,” said Eggen. “We’re not even close to meeting our wait times targets – patients are waiting several hours to be admitted to hospitals – and some Albertans are even travelling abroad for surgery.
According to the AHS documents, a CLOSED BED is defined as a bed that IS PHYSICALLY READY TO OPEN IF STAFFING AND FUNDING WERE AVAILABLE. The Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton has 203CLOSED BEDS, while the University of Alberta Hospital has another 34. As of this week, the Royal Alexandra is only meeting its wait time targets for admission 28% of the time.

As the province begins to bargain with thousands of health care workers, including nurses, we urgently need more health care professionals, not lose more nurses and more professionals.”

Tags: Long Term Care Bed Crisis

January 21, 2014