Hospital still lacking upgrades

Shannon LeClair

Times Reporter

 

The Strathmore hospital long-term care wing officially closed its doors in the fall of 2013, sending its 23 long-term care patients to Sagewood and other facilities.
It was stated at the time that the wing might be turned into a new Diagnostic Imaging (DI) and X-ray lab. To date that hasn’t happened, and instead the space is scheduled to become offices for the homecare staff.
‘The rest of them will be offices for homecare. Homecare has offices, I know when I was working I was the scheduler/payroll person, I had my own office, well they’re taking the gal that is doing it now and putting her in her own private little room where a resident use to live, with a private bathroom,” said Joanne Turner, who spent 28 years working the long-term care wing.
“We’re getting to be a big community here and we need those facilities, and that’s not going to happen. They told us as soon as we moved out, they don’t have the funding for that.”
The phlebotomy rooms have been moved into two of the former resident’s rooms, and the old hairdressing room. It is an improvement on the flow of wait times for blood testing, but there are still 20 rooms sitting empty, and they will be for some time.
“AHS does not want to be in the ‘housing’ or care of our elderly seniors, they would prefer to have them cared for by for-profit companies,” said Turner.
“This reduces their cost of elderly care so that they can hire more managers to come up with really great ideas to find ways of getting out of the health care for seniors altogether. Unrealistic thinking when these frail seniors are showing up in ER from care at these for profit facilities.”
One of the biggest problems that she sees is that the acute beds are being used by elderly waiting for placement when the 20 beds sitting empty could be used as a transition wing, freeing up acute care beds and having beds available in the ER department.
“Current plans include the relocation of some clinical services within the hospital such as lab, Home Care and rehabilitation, freeing up space in the emergency department and diagnostic imaging for better patient flow and future expansion.”
Expansion of the hospital has been a hot, and infuriating topic for many residents for some time, but especially since 2008 when then – Premier Ed Stelmach promised the expansion by stating that it will be built as quickly as possible, and that no more meetings were needed, it was a go.
Since that time instead of seeing the growth and upgrades needed to the hospital, which was built in the ’80s, there has been the loss of the long-term care wing.
In December 2014 the Edmonton Journal reported Strathmore as having the second highest emergency room visits at 30,399, sitting just below Cold Lake at 34,424. The number of patients visiting the emergency ward in Strathmore has been an issue for a number of years with people from Calgary opting to drive out here instead of deal with the wait times at city hospitals.
“Decisions regarding upgrading or adding new services at health care facilities are based on clinical needs and priorities in order to ensure the best quality health services are available in the most appropriate locations,” said Shorten when asked when and if Strathmore will see the long awaited and much needed upgrade.
Turner said she was told that Strathmore is currently sitting at 15th on the priority list for expansion in all of Alberta.
The unit has already sat vacant for over a year, with the promise of the incoming DI and X-ray lab. Turner asked Alberta Health Services (AHS) about the lab and was told it is still in the works, but now will be in five years due to a lack of funding; but now with recent talks from Premier Jim Prentice about pay cuts for public sector employees, the question is whether anything will happen to that
wing.
Dave Shorten, Alberta Health Services (AHS) executive director for rural health and facilities stated, in an email response, that, “Renovating and expanding the Strathmore Hospital was identified as a two to five year priority project in the in the AHS 2013/14 – 2016/17 capital submission. AHS is in the process of securing an architect to design plans for the remaining space in the Long Term Care wing. This space was made available when 82 continuing care beds were added to the community of Strathmore.”