In a news conference Thursday an Edmonton pediatric surgeon pleaded with the Province to do something about the number of cancelled surgeries and the lack of beds at the Stollery Children’s Hospital, following comments made from NDP leader Rachel Notley.
Dr. Bryan Dicken, a pediatric surgeon at the Stollery Children’s Hospital said that between April and August of 2014, 289 surgeries were cancelled.
In the news conference, Dicken admitted that the health care system is in a dire situation and that the province should be more accountable.
“We talk amongst colleagues and say, how many did you lose today? How many patients did you have cancelled? That’s a terrible way to practice medicine,” said Dicken at the conference.
The surgeon also said that there is on average, over one cancellation a day, which includes children who have serious medical problems.
His goal is to see a facility that can house 300 inpatients and to improve their patient’s quality of life.
Notley initially spoke out on the health care system earlier in March.
“This government has made promise after promise to fix our health care system and we haven’t seen an improvement, in fact things have gotten worse. The PC’s have refused to listen to frontline workers like Dr. Dicken for years and the results have been catastrophic,” said Notley in a press release.
“Last night I had to postpone surgery for a premature baby, this takes an incredible toll both emotionally and financially on parents and kids. When I call a parent to tell them their child’s surgery has been scheduled, in the same breath I’m warning them, that surgery will likely be bumped. That’s not the way we want to practice medicine,” said Dicken.
Staff at Health Minister Stephen Mandel’s office released a statement to CTV News Thursday:
“AHS is increasing capacity at the Stollery. The hospital is doing 20 percent more surgery this year than 4 years ago (IE. since 2010 - 2011). To help accommodate it, the surgical day ward has nearly doubled its hours, from 12 hours to 23 hours- so they can keep patients who need almost a full day to recover in the day ward, instead of having to put any patient over 12 hours in an inpatient bed.”
“The space crunch this winter seems to have happened because of a huge 17 percent increase in emergency surgery- nearly 300 more cases this year than last year.”
“You can’t plan for an increase that big. It’s just unfair to say it’s a ‘failure’ when there’s an impact. That kind of surge is disruptive in any system.”
“Obviously we’ll respond as much as needed – we don’t want to see more surgeries cancelled next winter. AHS has plans to develop up to 4 new operating rooms at the Stollery, which they’ll bring forward as needed depending on what happened with patient volumes going forward. There are no commitments today about what capital funding we can provide in next year’s budget, but obviously if volumes keep growing like this, we have to work with AHS to accommodate them.”
With files from Veronica Jubinville
