A Red Deer family doctor is concerned about the expanding use of rural hospitals in Central Alberta when it involves transferring Red Deerians out of the city.
Recently Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre started increasing efforts to transfer rural patients back to their community hospital when appropriate. In some cases Red Deerians also recuperate in rural hospital where they want to be with family, have a connection to that community, or when they want to move into continuing care there.
Dr. John Julyan-Gudgeon said while moving patients out of the hospital will help alleviate Red Deer’s bed crisis, it doesn’t solve the problem and creates less incentive for expansion at Red Deer hospital, he said.
“This just waits for the problem to get worse as we off-load to other hospitals,” Julyan-Gudgeon said.
He said rural hospitals will be pushed to capacity and they are facilities that operate with less staff. It will also mean fewer ambulances available in Red Deer if they’re transferring more patients out of the city.
“This will actually create an ambulance crisis,” Julyan-Gudgeon said.
Red Deer surgeon Dr. Paul Hardy, one of several Red Deer doctors advocating for Red Deer hospital’s expansion, said it does make sense to make the most of beds in Central Zone, but there are limits.
“Any effort we make to use our existing zone beds more efficiently is a smart thing to do. But given the degree of pressure we’re under, I don’t think there’s an easy solution. The need to expand the hospital it not going to go away,” Hardy said.
Some specialty surgeries have already been moved from Red Deer to rural hospitals to use space in the zone more efficiently.
Hardy, who does not perform rural surgery, said some of those surgeries should be done in Red Deer.
“It doesn’t make sense for a surgeon and five patients to travel to Stettler if they live in Red Deer. It’s both inconvenience and risk to be driving on the highways in the winter.
“But it’s out of necessity that’s been happening. If there is a hospital expansion we would like to see that taken into account.”
That’s not to say there shouldn’t be surgery in smaller hospitals, Hardy added.
“Some Red Deer residents are already getting transferred to these peripheral hospitals to be cared for by other doctors in the other hospitals for things like pneumonia, congestive heart failure, pancreatitis, things that don’t necessarily need a specialist to look after them,” Julyan-Gudgeon said.
He said Red Deer family doctors with admission privileges to care for their patients at the Red Deer hospital have been told the program will be extended to their patients, if patients consent.
He worried that patients, who may be in psychological and physiological crisis, will largely be agreeable to whatever is suggested to them.
“A lot of these patients have picked their family doctors as best they can from a pool of doctors based on whether they have privileges because they want to be taken care of in the community that they’re in.”
signature