Nineteen new ICU beds opened across Alberta

Kenney said, “these beds are staffed with new registered nurses, healthcare aids, unit clerks, respiratory therapists, and other allied health professionals who will keep those beds open when needed.”

“When demand and pressure slows down, there’s flexibility to redeploy staff to other areas where needs for care and treatment are higher,” stated the Premier.

Health Minister Jason Copping said the 19 ICU beds have been opened across facilities in Edmonton, Calgary, St. Albert, Grande Prairie and in Lethbridge.

five are in the Foothills Medical Centre (Calgary)
two are in Rockyview General Hospital (Calgary)
two are in South Health Campus (Calgary)
three are in the University of Alberta Hospital (Edmonton)
two are in the Royal Alexandra Hospital (Edmonton)
one is in the Sturgeon Community Hospital (St. Albert)
two are in the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital
two are in the Chinook Regional Hospital (Lethbridge)

He noted that Alberta Health Services (AHS) has plans to open the 31 remaining ICU beds by September. More details are expected to come at a later date.

With the opening of the new beds, Alberta now has 192 adult general ICU beds across the entire province, up from 173 before the pandemic. With $300 million over the next three years, AHS will boost its ICU capacity to 223 beds across all AHS zones.

Copping said, “these first 19 beds are already the biggest increase since AHS was created and the full 50 beds will be the biggest increase in decades.”

The Minister said adding these new beds means more staffing opportunities for healthcare professionals. He remarked, “every one of these new beds means 10 to 15 new positions, 250 staff for all of these 19 beds.”

Premier Kenney added that in addition to the 19 ICU beds set up across the province, 11 new operating rooms (ORs) are being added at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital, on top of the existing 32 ORs.

The Opposition NDP says, however, that Jason Kenney has failed to address the deepening crisis the government has created across Alberta’s healthcare system.

“The sight of Jason Kenney standing in front of unstaffed beds hastily pushed into an unfinished room really tells the story of healthcare under the UCP,” said Shannon Phillips, NDP MLA for Lethbridge-West and Critic for Finance. “Thanks to Jason Kenney and the UCP, we don’t have enough staff to operate the beds we already have, or the ambulances we already have, or the primary care clinics we already have.

“The UCP war on frontline professionals has created a profound crisis in healthcare.”

“Part of the pressure that our hospitals and ambulances are under is caused by the serious damage Jason Kenney and the UCP have caused to primary care,” Phillips added. “In my home town of Lethbridge there are more than 43,000 Albertans who can’t find a family doctor. After the last clinic closed in November, I called on the UCP to produce a plan to fix this. Six months later they have done nothing. In Banff and Canmore, there are exactly zero doctors accepting new patients.

“This leaves Albertans with serious unaddressed health conditions and nowhere to go but the emergency room,” exclaimed Phillips.

(With files from rdnewsNOW)

by Justin Goulet/LethbridgeNewsNOW

Nineteen new ICU beds opened across Alberta

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