By Chris Brown

Four-year project for province

New continuing care beds slated for city

Jul 9, 2021 | 1:34 PM

The province says Medicine Hat will receive 31 new continuing care beds this year, part of a larger plan to add close to 2,200 new beds across Alberta.

Over the next four years, the province will spend $400 million in operational funding for new publicly funded continuing care beds. In total, more than 6,000 beds will be added or replaced in publicly funded continuing care facilities.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro says the province needs more continuing care spaces to move patients through the whole system. There’s an underlying problem of delays in transferring patients from emergency departments into hospital beds because those beds are filled by people awaiting continuing care beds.

“When a patient is in the wrong place it’s not the best care for that patient,” Shandro said. “We need to build the right spaces so that continuing care is there when the next patient needs it.”

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The need for new spaces over the coming years in Alberta and Canada will grow.

Shandro says the number of seniors in Alberta is expected to double to more than 1.1 million by 2040, and the need for continuing care services is expected to grow by 62 per cent by 2030

Shandro says this non-capital initiative an important first step to increasing continuing care capacity. He says work to increase it via capital grant funding as well, and more details will be provided later.

This year, 343 beds will be added in Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, High Level, Red Deer, Valleyview and Westlock.