Whatever became of those elusive “triage liaison” docs who were supposed to be a Band-Aid on the crisis in Alberta’s big-city Emergency Rooms while the United Conservative Party Government figured out how to solve a problem that’s the result of nearly 40 years of Conservative policy negligence?
They seem to have completely disappeared … without ever appearing!
Readers will recall that late last year, the dangerous gong show in Alberta’s urban Emergency Rooms was approaching a state of near collapse from the annual winter surge of reparatory illness, undoubtedly made worse by the fact the MAGA-influenced UCP had tacitly discouraged Albertans to get vaccinated against respiratory diseases.
The crisis was particularly intense in Edmonton, where there hasn’t been a new hospital built since 1988, a period during which the population of the city more than doubled. Well, the NDP tried, but the UCP tore up the plans on the grounds, presumably, they were ideologically incorrect.
On Dec. 22, just before Christmas, 44-year-old Prashant Sreekumar died inside the Emergency Room at Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital after waiting eight hours to see a doctor about chest pains. The Grey Nuns, as it happens, is Edmonton’s newest hospital, the one completed in 1988.
In the short-lived burst of shock and anger that followed the young father’s needless death, Hospital and Surgical Services Minister Matt Jones got up on his hind legs at a news conference on Jan. 15 and promised that all would be well, the Government of Danielle Smith had reams of plans to make things better … eventually.
In the meantime, though, Mr. Jones told reporters at the newser, a new group of Emergency Room docs would help the triage nurses keep things moving in the city’s packed ERs. (Whether these docs would actually be much help was the subject of some debate, but the consensus seems to have been that more bodies helping out on triage wouldn’t be a bad thing even though triage nurses know what they’re doing. The idea had been tried before and didn’t prove effective enough to keep, but political needs must.)
The triage liaison docs would start “immediately,” Mr. Jones – who is one of the UCP’s Gang of Four redundant health ministers – assured the reporters.
But since then, basically, no one’s ever reported seeing a triage liaison physician in an Edmonton ER. They’re almost as elusive as Bigfoot, it would seem.
So what’s with that?
Near the end of January, the CBC reported the triage docs were supposed to start on Feb. 1, but probably wouldn’t. The Alberta Medical Association was still negotiating with the government about pay and working conditions for the category. “I don’t believe that it will start Feb. 1, but hopefully there won’t be a significant delay in getting it started,” AMA President Brian Wirzba told the network.
Whoops, the Band-Aid program would have to wait a bit, The Canadian Press reported on Feb. 2. “I would hope that maybe by the end of this week or next week we would start seeing some of these positions being filled,” Dr. Wirzba, still somewhat optimistic, told the CP.
Now nearly a month has passed and, yesterday, the CBC reported that a government spokesperson had informed them that “the work to recruit for the triage physician liaison role is ongoing.”
Ongoing? Ongoing where? When the CBC’s reporter asked if that meant there actually weren’t any triage liaison doctors, the spokesperson didn’t bother to reply. I think we can take that as confirmation there aren’t any, though, since no one ever seems to have seen one.
Yesterday’s CBC story went on to say that the negotiations to figure out what to pay the new physicians never seem to have happened at all. There’s never even been a meeting, the president of the AMA’s emergency medicine section told the broadcaster.
“The lack of consistent, real engagement has not made me feel confident that it was anything more than politics to announce something that would fix the problem,” said Dr. Warren Thirsk, cutting right to the chase.
Was Mr. Jones, lately the most visible member of the UCP’s Four Horsemen of the Health Care Apocalypse, just gaslighting us about even the Band-Aid solution he trotted out on Jan. 15?
That possibility certainly doesn’t do much to build confidence in the UCP’s promises of big capacity building programs at some indeterminate point in the future, especially in when the activities they’re actually engaged in all point to continued and radical privatization and Americanization of health care.
Or did he just think he could rustle up a few docs in a couple of minutes, give them all a badge with a new title and send them into the fray?
If so, this may just be another case of a conservative government proving it doesn’t have the chops to manage a peanut stand, let alone a massive health care system with a budget of nearly $30 billion and about 140,000 direct and indirect employees.
There’s a charming belief among many voters that if a party doesn’t have the word “conservative” in its name, it can’t manage the multi-billion-dollar business of government. Every day Alberta’s United Conservative Party government proves this is nonsense.
Alberta’s 2026 Budget will be made public in two weeks, on Feb . 26.
Will there be anything about building a new hospital for Edmonton in it? Don’t hold your breath. Finance Minister Nate Horner is already telegraphing tough times, tough choices, and tough noogies for Albertans who need more public services. Especially if they live in a city that consistently votes NDP.
Oh keep up will you? Triage teams are so out; we’re on to promising ‘classroom complexity teams’! Cue the Stand and Deliver score.
Wasn’t it Vassy Kapelos who asked Nicolaides what teacher in their flaming right mind would want to work for him? (Paraphrasing) Nevermind his saucy little monkey boy reputation. Thanks a lot, Jeremy Appel, can’t get that one out of my mind now.
Anything that the UCP says can’t be taken as the truth. The UCP has a hard time telling the truth.
Your last line clearly out lines the problem.
Perhaps Smith and co. are simply waiting until the province votes to leave Canada and then can take advantage of the great American health care system.
Perhaps it is time to implement a sales tax and use the money for health care only. People could vote on it, like you know a referendum. New hospitals, urgent care clinics, additional medical staff or no extra money for health care and take a chance you die just like that man did.
I understand some of those right wingers in Alberta are also bible belters. Some one ought to tell them when you need heart surgery or cancer treatments praying for an instant recovery is not going to happen.
The UCP now seems to be in some disarray, perhaps because it is unsure how to deal with fluctuating oil prices. After Horner said there were going to be tough times, Premier Smith seemed to be more reassuring. I wondered if they were playing good cop, bad cop and then oil prices also recovered slightly, so who knows what will happen.
Maybe Jones is another one on team good cop, but his failure to rustle up some more triage doctors so far is not a good sign. However, it seems more likely it was only just a part of a hasty political response to lengthy emergency wait times and negative outcomes, including deaths, that was starting to get too much news coverage and attention for the UCP. They don’t seem to like it when their health care bungling gets too exposed.
I am surprised Albertans have indulged Smith and her gang this far with their now years of promises of an improved health care system from their restructuring, when there seems to be no evidence of this happening so far. Perhaps Smith’s recent talk about sovereignty and picking new fights with the Feds has been able to somewhat distract them.
These still missing doctors are a worrying sign that the UCP still does not take our health care problems, many of which they have created or made worse, seriously enough. However, the next time there are bad news headlines the UCP may not be able to get off as easily, particularly if people remember they haven’t done yet what they last promised to do.
The physician liaison triage doctor idea worked marvelously at the addressing the UCP’s top priority: make political heat go away. Now if the media would only leave things alone.
I wonder if the UCP brain trust put much thought into what sort of doctor would apply to be a TLP. Doctors are in such short supply right now that any qualified doctor can pretty much work wherever they want. Why, then, would a doctor want to leave the security of working ‘behind the counter’, where they can focus on just one patient, and spend a shift in the waiting room, where they are exposed to all the illnesses patients are bringing in and spreading for hours, as well as the hostility of people watching their loved ones wait in pain.
TLPs would also be vulnerable professionally. In the noise of a crowded waiting room, a thorough triage may not be possible, but I expect they would still be liable in the event of an error. I assume they could also be liable if a patient had a complication as a result of a prolonged wait. If they are speaking to patients in the actual waiting room, patient confidentiality could become an issue as well.
On top of all these issues, there is also the fact that their position could easily be on the chopping block if a future government decides they need to find efficiencies in the health care system.
The big problem with the UCP is they come up with ideas and never follow up on them, especially in health care. This triage doctor thing has fallen by the wayside just like so many other ideas, like nurse the practioner thing. One of the many challenges I see is the UCP is totally dishonest with Albertans when it comes to the estimated wait time thing. For example, Rick Bell the total champion of the UCP endured a medical episode. He looked and the Sheldon Chumir had a wait time of 29 minutes. When he got there the nurse indicated he would have a far better chance of winning the Lotto 649 than getting to see a doctor in 29 minutes. As it turns out he ended up waiting pretty much all day to get his problem resolved. The other problem is many of these emergency departments only have one doctor working, even in some larger hospitals like the Misericordia and probably others. The best way to deal with that portion is to scrap the estimated wait time garbage, and be honest with Albertans, which I know is impossible for the UCP to even think about, let alone actually do. They need to update in real time: how many doctors are working at each emergency, how many beds there are at each location, and how many people are waiting. This way there is total transparency and people know what they are dealing with. Also it will put pressure on the larger hospitals and perhaps staff their ER departments properly.
The other massive failing with the UCP is with dealing with those fighting addiction. The only way to get quick service at an ER is if you overdose. While druggies and drunks used to primarily hang out at the Royal Alex, they are now taking up ER space at all the hospitals. They should adopt a three strikes rule that if you show up needing care for too many drugs or alcohol 3 times, you automatically need to go for counselling.
In terms of new hospitals in the Edmonton area, the UCP has waffled on their plans again and again. The latest is the new Stollery (which no doubt take more than a decade to build), will ease the burden. Of course then there are the 500 bed towers announced for Calgary, Misericordia and Grey Nun’s which Dingy Smith now has lessened to 350 in her last blathering, which will also take forever to build if it ever happens. All we can do is hope Smith herself gets sick and has to wait ad nauseum to get treated, because things are not going to improve any time soon.
Sorry David, a little off topic. I wonder if Smith and the UPC are proud of gutting Public Healthcare and Public Education. I wonder if they’re proud of what they have accomplished, with their environmental polices and the way they manage Alberta’s wildlife. The way they kiss the rings of their keepers and rob from people who depend on AISH. Are they proud of the division they have created, between Albertans and will they be proud, when the powder keg explodes and people / Albertans start to get hurt. Something tells me, that they are proud of all this and when it blows up in their face, they will absolve themselves of all responsibility.
What happened to them?
The dog ate them.
I don’t know how the doctors triaging patients in the hospital Emergency Departments would move the sick and injured through any faster, anyway. They might change a priority order once in a while. But, if more actual doctors were hired for the ERs, and the nurses to assist them and care for the patients, and there were a couple more hospitals, and the hospital wards had open beds, with the specialists and hospitalists to do medicine and surgery (and the nurses and support staff to care for the patients) and the public OR’s weren’t shuttered, and there was actual long term care capacity for our frail seniors, and there were primary care clinics with GP’s for everybody who needed one .. you know more actual public health care infrastructure and staff ..all the things people having been telling them for years that were needed- then maybe they could fix the problem! But the UCP just sprinkles pixie dust, or blows smoke, or whatever, when there’s a crisis. “Triage liaison”. Create some mystical jargon. Fancy! It’s French, to boot. I can just see Danielle Smith latching on to that. As the old saying goes, “Bullshit Baffles Brains”. Meanwhile, the situation becomes more dire, the mortality rate keeps going up, and the UCP hopes nobody notices! They’ve taken a world class health care system and completely trashed it. So many dedicated people worked so hard for so many years to get it up and functioning, and then to see it brought to its knees like this is and so many people suffering and dying because of this ineptitude, ideology, and outright malice is absolutely criminal.
The crises of diminishing “health care” not only affects big urban hospital emergency wards, but even more, so many rural hospitals actually close for many hours, even days! So where do the sick of rural Alberta go? Can they get help, and where? This certainly compounds the problems at urban hospitals!