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
Today: Doctors press for hospital improvements
Friday: Provincial government shortchanges Red Deer
A small group of central Alberta doctors have become health-care heroes by raising the alarm about much-needed hospital expansion.
More than two years ago, about 10 doctors went public with service and infrastructure deficits impacting patient care at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
They called for a life-saving treatment for heart attack victims, an expanded emergency department and more hospital beds and programs.
Dr. Keith Wolstenholme said some doctors have asked him if he’s scared of repercussions for speaking out, and he has wondered if physicians have pushed the cause too far.
“There is a real fear of consequence for standing up and speaking out. But at the end of the day, if we get hospital expansion, and we’re able to take better care of our patients, then it’s worth that risk for me,” Wolstenholme said.
“What I’m doing is advocating for the public. That allows me to sleep at night.”
He said conditions were snowballing, with no room for patients, whether they were coming out of the emergency department or surgery. The hospital needs full expansion and redevelopment, said Wolstenholme.
“We need operating rooms. We need beds. We need emergency department stretchers. We need a cardiac cath lab. But it all goes together. It can’t be piecemeal,” Wolstenholme said.
Dr. Paul Hardy said doctors got involved in expansion planning over 10 years ago and decided to speak out when the Red Deer hospital project was eliminated from the capital project list in 2016.
The project is now back on the list after months of sustained pressure from doctors and community members.
“Both AHS and the government were surprised by our efforts. I think initially, they may have thought we were disgruntled physicians who would vent our frustrations for a month or two, and then go back to our jobs,” said Hardy, who is the Alberta Party candidate for Red Deer-North.
But in early 2017, doctors accelerated their efforts and stepped in front of a microphone to host a public meeting that attracted about 400 central Albertans.
He said there was traction after that public meeting. A community advocacy group was formed, now called the Society for Hospital Expansion in Central Alberta, and it launched its Demand Care campaign in early March.
“It felt very satisfying to get our message out there and be heard, because we knew what a lot of people didn’t know. We had very good data and we had all the logic and evidence on our side.
“That’s why it’s kept going and that’s why it’s not going to stop.”
He said it wasn’t about making doctors’ lives better.
“The physicians who started this are as busy as they could ever be with our clinical practices, so there’s no gain to us in terms of income in getting a hospital expansion.
“It may make our careers more rewarding and bring on new people with new skills, but it’s basically about the central Albertans, the patients,” Hardy said.
Dr. Kym Jim said it’s actually been very easy to continue the fight for hospital expansion.
“The degree of disparity in terms of the funding is so significant, it drives us every day to make sure that we’re getting the right care here for our patients,” Jim said.
He said speaking out was something doctors initially didn’t want to do, but it was something they had to do to make the public aware of what was needed.
“The reality is the hospital in Red Deer delivers an excellent quality of care for what we can deliver. All of us are very proud to work at the hospital, because it’s an excellent hospital. It’s just that we should be able to deliver more.”
For doctors, stepping forward brings the care they provide into question, and no one wants to be a physician who can’t provide the care that their patients should have. But doctors realized that they weren’t the problem, he said.
“It’s a system problem,” Jim said.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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