Debates continue over Strathmore hospital

Miriam Ostermann
Times Associate Editor

 

The perennial problems surrounding the Strathmore Hospital catapulted back into the forefront at the last town council meeting, when Strathmore-Brooks MLA Derek Fildebrandt affirmed that efforts for the much-needed upgrades remain ongoing.
Fildebrandt toured the facility earlier this year, meeting with the staff and officials regarding the improvements needed for the emergency room. Despite raising the issue in the legislature on multiple occasions, Fildebrandt said responses have thus far been substandard.
“My number one local issue, both during the campaign and since the campaign, was, and remains, local health care infrastructure,” said Fildebrandt.
“In the brief spring sitting of the legislature … we were told on issues like the Strathmore emergency room to hold on because the government was too new in the spring. We did hold on until fall and now the tone of the legislature is significantly more adversarial. We haven’t been able to get quite the answers that we wanted.”
The Strathmore Hospital was constructed in 1985, and since then has yet to undergo any modifications or expansion. Deemed as the second busiest rural emergency room in Alberta, seeing upwards of 30,000 patients each year, local officials have spent the last 30 years waiting on the government’s empty promises to come to fruition.
Building on frustrations around parking, lack of resources for seniors and handicapped individuals, and hospital improvements, a wing – which once housed the long-term care unit and was originally planned to accommodate a laboratory, diagnostic imaging, pharmacy, and home care while freeing up space for the emergency room – now continues to remain vacant.
“In April 2013, health officials told the community of Strathmore that when they moved the long-term care out that it was not about cutting costs at all, but a part of a much bigger plan,” said Councillor Denise Peterson. “While we welcome the miniscule additional diagnostic imaging – it was really welcome – it is not big and it is nowhere near to being big.”
Since the NDP came into government earlier this year, town council in collaboration with Fildebrandt held discussions on having NDP Health Minister Sarah Hoffman visit the community and tour the facilities. By attracting people from Calgary with Strathmore’s shorter wait times than in the city, some councillors worry the additional stress on the staff and physicians may become too much to handle.
Fildebrandt, who is lobbying for three main health care infrastructure projects in his constituency, said a letter has already been sent to the minister with an invitation to tour the facilities.
“I know in the last correspondence that we’ve observed there was an effort on (Derek Fildebrandt’s) part to get the minister into Strathmore to have a look, and of course that’s something we’ve been trying since the new government was formed,” said Councillor Bob Sobol.
“We’ve tried a couple of times, and I appreciate she’s got everybody wanting her attention right now, I don’t mean any disrespect to her. I think it’s important that she visits the community.”
Along with the hospital infrastructure concerns, Fildebrandt was adamant about tackling the issues of seniors transportation and the state of seniors care facilities. For now, however, he asked the hospital to complete a concrete plan and encouraged councillors and stakeholders to join him at the legislature in Edmonton to lobby for the project in the future.
“You ask nicely for a while, but sometimes you have to rattle the cage of the government from time to time to get its attention,” said Fildebrandt.
“Sometimes government is a faceless bureaucratic beast and I think it helps. I’ve asked for the hospital to have … something specific with a price-tag attached, when we have that, I think that’s the point at which we get the right stakeholders together we all go to Edmonton together when we are in session and really make the case in person. We’re going to continue to press the government on that as my number one local priority as MLA.”