Carla Peck says her 79-year-old father waited more than 90 hours on a stretcher in an Edmonton hospital emergency overflow area. Her family fears how the long wait will affect him long term.Megan Albu/The Globe and Mail
Carla Peck didn’t think to pack more than a change of clothes and slippers for her 79-year-old dad who was rushed to an Edmonton hospital with what she learned was a serious influenza infection. She imagined it might be hours before he was seen, not days.
But for more than 90 hours − nearly four full days − her dad was confined to a stretcher in an overflow area of the emergency department waiting room, and briefly in the actual ED, at the University of Alberta Hospital. Ms. Peck said her father’s health deteriorated as he was immobilized in bed, unable to comfortably rest, use the washroom or eat without help.
“He was in so much pain and he was just getting worse. He’s supposed to be in hospital to get better,” she said. “We were just beside ourselves.”
Her father, Art Peck, is still in hospital, now recovering in his own inpatient room. However, his family is worried about what lies ahead.
Many patients like him are languishing for days in makeshift waiting areas to receive care as patient demand exceeds bed availability in hospitals across Alberta. The problem is particularly acute in the Edmonton area, where the medical community cites rapid population growth and underfunding as key factors.
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The province has been under intense pressure to address hospital strain in Edmonton after three deaths occurred on the same day in the Grey Nuns Community Hospital ED. Although the circumstances of two of the patients are unclear, one case has been widely publicized: Prashant Sreekumar, a 44-year-old father of three, who died on Dec. 22 after spending eight hours in the facility.
Doctors in Edmonton’s major hospitals have called on Alberta to declare a state of emergency, arguing that there is no give left in the system to safely accept patients, The Globe and Mail learned last week. The province, at first, said the call was “misguided” but later acknowledged ED waiting times are a “serious concern” and outlined measures to address the issue.
The Alberta Medical Association has stood behind the Edmonton physicians. It said, for more than a year, Alberta hospitals have been operating over 110 per cent capacity.
Ms. Peck said her father was rushed by ambulance to University Hospital on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 4. He had suffered a fall earlier that day and later became confused and weak. Ms. Peck and her mom arrived at the hospital around 6:30 p.m. where they found Mr. Peck in a hallway with two paramedics who kept on eye on his vitals.
Three hours later, Mr. Peck was moved to an overflow area near the ED waiting room. Ms. Peck said he was placed in one of what she described as 12 cubicles with thin curtains at the entry, barely big enough to fit his narrow stretcher and the two chairs, one they scrounged from the ED. There was no bedside table and no bathroom, not even a sink.
It was in this tight space that Mr. Peck spent the majority of the next four days. Despite being admitted to family medicine, he had to wait for an inpatient bed to open.
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The fluorescent lights, non-stop beeping of medical machines and chatter and cries of other patients made it nearly impossible for him to rest. Nurses checked on him every so often.
“I know they’re doing as best they can but he was just not getting the kind of care that he needed,” Ms. Peck said.
Her father has Parkinson’s disease and she said there was no attempt to stand him up or see whether he could walk, which aggravated his condition. His entire body grew sore and, with each passing day, Mr. Peck became more agitated and restless, so much so that he was shaking uncontrollably come Wednesday.
Ms. Peck spent days advocating on her dad’s behalf to hospital leadership. She thinks this is what helped to finally get him into an inpatient bed on Thursday afternoon, roughly 92 hours after he first arrived to hospital.
The difference in care is “night and day” and Ms. Peck said her father is now slowly recovering from an influenza A infection and general weakness. But she’s afraid how the wait will affect him long term.
“The biggest concern for me and my mom right now is whether this situation advanced his deterioration or his weakness, which means he might not be able to come home,” she said.
Kyle Warner, press secretary to Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones, apologized in a statement for any delays in care and wished the patient a safe recovery.
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Acute Care Alberta is co-ordinating a provincewide response to deal with hospital strain, which it said is driven by a particularly challenging respiratory virus season. Its strategy includes accelerating hospital discharges and diverting low-acuity patients away from EDs.
In a Monday statement, ACA chief executive David Diamond also noted that seven non-urgent surgeries have been postponed but that “every effort is being made to preserve” scheduled surgeries.
Paul Parks, president-elect of the emergency physicians section of the Alberta Medical Association, said the ACA response is nothing more than “gobbledygook.” He said it is particularly disappointing that the province is “bragging” about delaying only a handful of surgeries.
Either the government doesn’t understand the extent of the crisis, Dr. Parks said, or is “making active decisions to allow patients to suffer and die in our waiting rooms rather than give us some pressure relief.”