Province will miss emergency room wait-time targets
EDMONTON — The Alberta government says it will not meet its deadline for emergency room wait time targets.
When they were set back in May 2010, the province said the targets — treating patients within eight hours of arrival 60 per cent of the time — would be reached this month.
But Health Minister Fred Horne says that is not going to happen.
According to Alberta Health Services, the Misericordia is the only Edmonton-area hospital that has shortened wait times since January 2010.
The other four hospitals have not shown much improvement.
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman says the Conservative government has had long-enough time to fix the problem and it has not.
“I work every Sunday,” said Sherman, who is a practising emergency room doctor. “I spent an hour trying to get a patient into a bed. There wasn’t one medical bed available in Edmonton.”
The government maintains that an increase in volume at emergency rooms is playing a part in longer wait times.
The province also said money announced in last week’s budget for continuing care and family care clinics could take some stress off the province’s emergency rooms.
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