CHAT file photo

By Teagan Rasche

'going to impact all care'

City hospital capacity ‘OK,’ but other overwhelmed provincial hospitals have domino effect

Jan 10, 2022 | 5:02 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – As COVID-19 hospitalizations increase across the province, an emergency room doctor at the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital says our ‘hospital capacity is functioning OK.”

The hospital is dealing with a large number of delayed care and scheduled surgeries as well as staffing issues.

“We have nobody in the wings right now to step when we have these staffing issues that we know are going to happen,” Paul Parks said.

Parks, who’s also the president of emergency medicine for the Alberta Medical Association, says staffing issues are due to many nurses having left the profession and breakthrough infections that will require hospital staff to isolate. If local hospitalization numbers go up, it will be “an extreme challenge.”

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Parks says we are a few weeks behind from what happens in other provinces and in bigger Albertan cities. While the MHRH is OK, he says busier hospitals in other cities have a local effect.

If Medicine Hat patients require a higher level of care, there will be nowhere for them to go. He says this fifth wave will also affect both COVID and non-COVID patients.

“If the wave is as big as AHS and the numbers are predicting, then it’s going to impact all care,” Parks said. “It’s not just care for COVID, it’s going to mean anybody non-COVID patients with heart attacks, strokes, traumas, infections, you name it. The ability to deliver timely care for them will be impacted as well.”

To help with this wave, Parks reminds people to keep washing their hands, wearing a mask and get vaccinated and their boosters.