Northern Lights Regional Health Centre – Page 2

Maternity Ward Upgrade Planned for Northern Lights Regional Health Centre

The Northern Lights Regional Health Centre in Fort MacMurray will get a much needed maternity ward upgrade, with an expanded outpatient clinic and additional postpartum beds for new moms. The upgrades will not only improve the patient experience and allow the ward to handle additional patients it will also help staff deal better with the patient flow. Northern Lights Regional Health Centre maternal care manager Rebecca Syme discussed the current situation and why an upgrade is sorely needed. “We currently see in excess of 500 moms a month in our outpatient clinic, so we’re really busy. We have booked appointments and we also have people that walk-in to be assessed. And we’re trying to manage that in a three bed space. It’s the same with the post-partum (inpatient) beds. It’s not really increasing from what we’re already doing. We already have that increased (number of) patients coming through. It’s coping with it.”

Right now Northern Lights Regional Health Centre is handling 100 or more births each month, and that number is expected to increase in the future. A maternity ward upgrade will help the hospital staff handle the current caseload more efficiently. The project has a $500,000 budget and all of the funds will come from Northern Lights Health Foundation grants. Last year there were approximately 1,400 births at the facility so an expansion is greatly needed. The renovation and maternity ward upgrade is expected to start later this year. Fort McMurray’s Higher Health Clinic doulas provided a cheque for $13,000 to the hospital and associated foundation so that a new waiting room can be added to the expanded clinic.

ER Wait Times at Northern Lights Regional Health Centre Among Best in Alberta

The ER wait times at the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre are among the best in Alberta, but they still fall short of the goals that the province has set for the year. A goal of 90% of patients getting a bed in the hospital within 8 hours was set in 2010, but recent documents released by the opposition party show that wait times of up to 3 days have been seen in the last year in provincial emergency rooms. The average ER wait times between 2011 and the beginning of 2015 was a little more than 11 hours, and the worst period was seen near the end of 2013 when patients saw a wait time for a hospital bed at an average of almost 13.5 hours.

No one argues that the health care system needs to be tweaked, and the ER wait times are just a reflection of problem in the current system. While the ER wait times at Northern Lights Regional Health Centre were better than some other communities in Alberta it still fell short of the goals that the government has set. Many officials support increasing the number of long term care beds in order to relief some of the stress on community hospitals and to improve the wait times that are seen. Rachel Notley, the NDP Leader, released a statement which said “These are the patients who are facing serious illnesses and injuries and need to be admitted to the hospital for treatment and instead they’re spending days waiting in emergency departments for a bed to open. That is unacceptable.”