The Advocate presents a three-part series that puts the city’s undersized and under-resourced hospital under the microscope.
Wednesday: Patients frustrated by quality of care
Thursday: Doctors press for hospital improvements
Today: Provincial government shortchanges Red Deer
The fight for more medical services and to expand Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre has become a community effort.
What began as a group of doctors speaking out in 2016, hosting public sessions and rallies, progressed into the newly named Society for Hospital Expansion in Central Alberta, with a 15-member board that includes four of the original doctors, and a wide selection of community members.
In March, the society launched its Demand Care campaign by releasing troubling statistics about the amount of money that’s been invested, per capita, on health care infrastructure in the region.
Society board member Brooklyn Dixon helped the group access government spending details through freedom of information requests.
Data shows between 2008 and 2018, central Alberta received roughly 1,000 per cent less in health-care infrastructure investment, at only $228 per capita, while Edmonton received $1,118 per capita and Calgary received $1,633.
“Going through some of those numbers, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. It blows my mind how many people these numbers pass through and nobody flagged it,” said Dixon.
She said access to needed health care is an issue for everybody.
“Everybody talks about it at coffee, or the water cooler: it’s health care. Without your health, you have nothing.”
She said it’s been rewarding to witness the evolution of what the doctors started and the steadfast determination of the society.
“The society is here for the long run and we’re really here to see it out. This society is definitely not going away,” Dixon said.
Board member and business woman Joan Donald Jr. said unfortunately, a lot of central Albertans still don’t know about the huge, local shortfall in health-care services.
“Everyone thinks our health-care system in Alberta is lovely, and in our country. Compared to many other countries it is … but when you need to access that system, and realize what the shortages are, then you realize it’s not that great.
“In central Alberta, ours is largely due to the underfunding that has been the norm for our little forgotten part of Alberta for a really long time,” Donald said.
She said her family has owned and operated businesses in Red Deer for more than 35 years, and central Alberta’s grossly underfunded medical system shows that tax dollars have not been distributed equally.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know that.
“When you personally are affected by something that should be funded to you, because you paid your taxes, and you are turned away, or left with some undesirable situation because of it, that’s when people realize it.”
The society is preparing to launch its new website and wants to help people share stories that may number in the thousands.
It is also pushing hard for the province to make the hospital’s latest needs assessment public, she said.
“Our own feeling within the board is that they are withholding the report because it does, in fact, make them look very bad and Red Deer is really, really overdue for equalization in funding,” Donald said.
Board member Lynn Van Laar said she stepped forward to advocate for hospital expansion after hearing daily overcapacity announcements at the facility while visiting her stepson.
Then she became a patient because of a blood clot on her lung last summer. After waiting eight hours to see a doctor, she ended up in a bed behind a curtain in what had been a television room that was converted to a storage and gathering space for families.
“There was a family who had lost a family member who passed away and they came in there to grieve. They didn’t have anywhere to go and I had nowhere to go either because that was my room,” Van Laar said.
“I didn’t have a bathroom, so whenever I had to go to the bathroom, I would find one that’s open in somebody else’s room.”
When she had to return to hospital a few days later, because she was coughing up blood, there were no beds available and she sat with three other women in lounge chairs in a small room in the emergency department.
One woman was waiting for gallbladder surgery and another was vomiting nonstop.
“You’re not sleeping. You’re up for over 24 hours. Your sitting up in a chair. You’re cold. We all needed beds, but there was just no room,” Van Laar said.
Alberta Health Services says it has completed an update of the 2015 needs assessment for Red Deer hospital, which identifies areas of highest need and priority, and examines the potential for service growth and for shifting appropriate services to the community.
It says work is already taking place to enhance services and access to community-based services, increase after-hours primary care, add additional staff in the emergency department and create 348 new continuing care spaces in the community, among other initiatives.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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