INNISFAIL – While Devin Dreeshen sings the praises for his government’s past $1.8 billion commitment to the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre expansion he remains “extremely frustrated” that Alberta Health Services has dragged its heals on investing $20,000 to fix the Innisfail hospital’s ambulance door.
“It is extremely frustrating when I have meeting after meeting with AHS and they continue to say that it is not a priority of AHS to actually improve the ambulance bay door in Innisfail,” said the provincial MLA for Innisfail – Sylvan Lake. “And the most head scratching response I got from AHS was, ‘well, if we make this improvement at Innisfail, then we'd then have to do it at other rural hospitals across Alberta as well.
“The audacity of them to say, ‘if we do it here, then we'd have to do it everywhere,” he added. “Albertans expect to have quality health care across the province, whether they're in Edmonton, Calgary or rural Alberta; so that is just not a good enough answer for me.”
- RELATED: Town of Innisfail fights back over ambulance door issue
- RELATED: Innisfail officials, group fed up with ‘horrifying’ ambulance door issue
The $1.8 billion expansion investment for the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre was announced 13 months ago. In last month’s provincial budget $321 million over two years was earmarked for the project.
It is not clear at this time whether this cash infusion is separate from the $1.8 billion from last year but Dreeshen is still pleased with the overall healthcare commitment to the region.
“If folks in Central Alberta suffer from a heart attack once this is built, they can go to Red Deer and get immediate treatment versus having to go into an ambulance and go to Edmonton or Calgary,” said Dreeshen. “That is very timely health care delivery.”
Nevertheless, Dreeshen’s concern right now is the ambulance door issue at the Innisfail Medical Centre; a problem that has been festering for more than three and half years.
The problematic issue is that the current door is not wide enough for ambulances, which has increasingly forced EMS to unload ill and injured patients outside in the cold, and then roll them inside past alarmed citizens and staff.
In one “horrifying” incident in 2021 an elderly lady was accidently dumped in the snow coming off the ambulance.
Last fall, members of the Innisfail Health Centre Auxiliary appealed to Innisfail town council for financial support to help their fundraising efforts to get the door fixed themselves.
Council was told the estimated cost to widen the ambulance bay door was $45,000. Elected members heard that $25,000 had been raised but an additional $20,000 was required to start the project.
All members of town council supported the urgent appeal but pointed the finger at the province. Council then unanimously passed a motion to advocate on their behalf to the province to get the job done and quickly.
Mayor Jean Barclay wrote a strongly worded letter to Premier Danielle Smith that the onus to address the longstanding wrong-sized ambulance bay door problem belonged to the province and that the Alberta government immediately fund the project.
More than four months later the ambulance door problem is still not fixed and Dreeshen is fed up.
“I'm still going to push to make sure that AHS actually prioritizes, or perhaps the Government of Alberta makes that decision to say this (ambulance door) is a priority and it needs to be built,” said Dreeshen. “I was born in the hospital. It’s a great hospital, and this (ambulance door) is still a frustration of mine, and I think for lots of people from that area.”
He pointed out the recently released provincial budget called for a $2 billion healthcare increase this year over 2022, bringing total spending to $25 billion. With that, noted Dreeshen, was also an increase in capital spending.
“How it is currently designed is that AHS gets to set priorities for capital projects such as that, and that is something where local officials, the town administrator, the mayor and others have been pushing and hoping that AHS views this as a priority,” said Dreeshen. “I know I will continue to do that as well.”
