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Emergency room overcrowding: Calgary doctors get creative to cope

Emergency room overcrowding: Calgary doctors get creative to cope

A Calgary physician says doctors are dealing with Emergency Room overcrowding in creative ways.

On Tuesday the Alberta NDP released information the party says shows a spike in the number of times Calgary hospitals have been at risk of being unable to treat very sick patients quickly enough.

Dr. Rhonda Ness, who works in the ER at Alberta Children's Hospital and the Foothills Medical Centre, says very sick patients are being treated in a timely manner — because doctors are finding creative ways to deal with overcrowding.

“For the higher acuity patients we're challenging the idea that everyone needs to be seen in a bed,” she said.

“Really what we think is that everyone needs to be seen by a physician in a timely manner and have the appropriate investigations ordered in a timely manner. But they don't need to be in a bed.

“We'll use things called touchdown beds where we'll bring patients right out of the waiting room, exam them in a bed and then put them in a chair while we wait for results,” she said.

Patient care suffers

However Dr. Paul Parks, head of Emergency Medicine with the Alberta Medical Association, says the situation remains dire with emergency departments dangerously over capacity.

"Often we can't give timely care to the sickest patients,” he said.

Parks says last week doctors sent a list of cases where patient care suffered as a result — to Premier Jim Prentice and Health Minister Stephen Mandel. They have not received a response.

Prentice says he is aware of the challenges and work is being done. "We moved pretty quickly to open new acute care beds to take some of the pressure off,” he said.

Prentice also reiterated that the province has a plan to free up capacity by building more long-term care beds for seniors. He says Albertans will hear more about the plan in the coming weeks.