Health consultation gathers lots of useful information
By Dan Singleton
MVG staff
A recently held information-gathering session conducted by the David Thompson Health Advisory Council (DTAC) in Sundre uncovered some very useful and enlightening information, says Sundre member Gerald Ingeveld.
DTAC, one of a dozen councils in the province, covers the municipalities of Red Deer, Rocky Mountain House, Olds, Sundre and surrounding area. Its mandate includes gathering public input on the state of health care and reporting back to Alberta Health.
All 12 councils are currently hosting information-gathering sessions.
“Some really good information has come in and that is all being worked on and distilled now,” said Ingeveld. “We've found that a lot of the assumptions about population sizes and about call areas such as hospital areas and ambulance service areas need to updated.”
During the recent Sundre session, Dr. Hal Irvine and Dr. Eugene Landsbergen, as well as others, meet with council members.
“In Sundre, for example, one of the things we heard was about the number of people who show up here on the weekend,” he said. “When they (Alberta Health) talk about the number of people the Sundre hospital is serving, that might be true for four days of the week, but for Friday to Monday, it is much busier.
“The on-call status of our physicians was also an eye-opener. We do have nine doctors in Sundre, but we don't have nine full-time doctors because they are shared positions. On one out of five days a physician is basically on call 24 hours a day for the hospital. That is considered quite high in Alberta. Alberta Health didn't realize that because although there are nine doctors, they are not all full-time positions.”
Another interesting finding relates to mental health services in the Sundre area.
“One of the things we found was that there is insufficient mental health service in this area,” he said. “The accessibility to mental health care in this area is very low.
“You get a mental health worker on Thursday, so if you are having trouble on Saturday, they can make an appointment for you on Thursday and that doesn't cut it. So that was certainly brought to our attention.”
The recent appointment of the executive vice-president for the region has been a positive step, he said.
“We have someone who can actually make some decisions, and that's very handy,” he said.
The DTAC has been filing ongoing reports or briefs with Alberta Health Services on issues that have been uncovered during the consultation process.
“When particular issues we create the briefs and we send them off to the board and they are dealt with by the board or by administration depending on how the board directs,” he said.
In particular the council recently sent off two briefs, one dealing with seniors' issues and one regarding accessibility of rural hospitals to specialists.
The David Thompson council is planning to continue the information-gathering sessions over the next months, he said.
“We are planning to do four to six more public involvement sessions, probably in September and October. We are planning that right now. The next one in the southwest corner of the division in Rocky Mountain House,” he said.
Alberta Health Services says the 10-15 appointed member health advisory councils' mandate includes:
• Providing feedback about what is working well within the health-care system and suggest areas for improvement;
• Engaging members of the community and communicate what is being said about health services in their area;
• Considering quality and safety reports provided by Alberta Health Services and identify issues or trends from a local perspective; and
• Providing feedback to Alberta Health Services on matters pertaining to health services and service delivery.
