Stollery wait hits 17 hours, Edmonton ER doc says patients are dying in waiting rooms

A fresh alarm was sounded Wednesday over the amount of time Albertans are waiting to access emergency care.

At one point on Tuesday, the wait at Edmonton's Stollery Children's Hospital hit 17 hours.

By Wednesday evening that number had fallen to about three hours. Waits at other emergency departments in the Alberta capital were as high as eight hours.

"We are seeing deaths. So we have had deaths from people who sat in the waiting room and have passed away in the waiting room," Dr. Warren Thirsk told CTV News Edmonton.

"We are seeing untold hours of suffering just from pain not being controlled, from the anxiety of knowing something's wrong with you and not being looked after."

Thirsk said there's simply too many patients and not enough resources to care for them.

"We acknowledge that in some instances, wait-times are too long," said Kerry Williamson with Alberta Health Services (AHS), who added wait times fluctuate rapidly through the day and night.

"No patient waited the longest time posted last night at the Stollery, and the same is true generally for the longest wait times posted at a point in time overnight. The average wait time at the Stollery emergency department from Oct. 16 to Oct. 18 was 3.2 hours."

'REINFORCEMENTS ARE COMING'

In her first press conference as premier, Danielle Smith said she plans to make major changes in the health-care system and that she has a plan for wait times.

"I want to let our health-care workers know: Reinforcements are coming. We cannot continue understaffing our hospitals and then forcing our workers to work mandatory overtime," Smith said on Oct. 11.

Smith also said, "I don't think it's a personnel shortage; I think it's a working conditions problem."

The premier blamed AHS for "mismanagement" of staffing, including previously having a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination rule.

The NDP blames the UCP for ballooning wait times.

"We have chaos in our health-care system right now and the UCP’s only plan is to create more chaos," leader Rachel Notley said.

"What we need instead is to re-establish stability, to properly fund the system and work collaboratively and respectfully with the health care leaders within that system."

Williamson said there was a 15-per cent increase in the number of patients needing care in the first quarter of this year compared to last and that there are 270 more staff members working in emergency rooms today than there was a year ago.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Matt Woodman and Kyra Markov