Three Deaths, Zero Beds: Edmonton Hospitals Ask Province to Officially Acknowledge Reality

Doctors at Edmonton’s major hospitals are asking the Alberta government to declare a state of emergency, noting that the health-care system has reached the exciting new phase of “completely full, no vacancy, please stop knocking.”

The request follows the widely reported death of Prashant Sreekumar, who died Dec. 22 after waiting eight hours in the emergency department at Grey Nuns Community Hospital. This week, The Globe and Mail reported he was not alone – two other patients also died in the same ER that day, suggesting the hospital may now be running a punch-card system.

Edmonton hospitals have struggled for years, particularly since COVID-19, but doctors say rapid population growth, chronic underfunding and a growing number of alternative level of care (ALC) patients have pushed the system past its limits.

ALC patients no longer need hospital care but remain because there is nowhere else to go – a concept doctors describe as “medically cleared, geographically trapped.”

Meanwhile, the province has yet to declare an emergency, apparently waiting to see if things somehow get less full on their own.

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