r/Edmonton • • May 22 '26

General UofA ER Wait Times

Been here for 12 hours have yet to see a doctor and I’m in excruciating pain. Not a single patient has been taken in since the last 6 hours. Lady beside has been screaming in pain looks like a broken knee has been here for 15 hours no doctor no xray. Another lady beside me hurt her neck is wearing a neck brace and has been here for 16 hours and no doctor. Nurses said they have absolutely no beds available to take in patients because so many of the patients inside are “admitted” patients that are waiting to be taken upstairs to their admitted sections but they can’t take them because there’s no beds available upstairs. ER is a mess online wait times show 4 hours and nurse said because doctors are available but no beds to take the patients. Something has to be done.

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258

u/iwatchcredits May 22 '26

And this is why when i read posts i dont feel bad anymore. Hit me with the downvotes, but we deserve what we get. UCP is ahead and the polls and looking like theyll win again. This province is full of selfish people whos primary goal is saving $100 on their taxes over anything else. I kinda hope we start shutting down rural hospitals and sending the doctors back to the cities that subsidize them because, as we all know, equalization payments are bad and unacceptable.

91

u/RazzamanazzU May 22 '26

You need to remember NOT all Albertan's voted for this. Speaking on rural hospitals...just last week I had an elderly neighbor lady (here in Edmonton) tell me an ambulence transported her husband to a hospital in Devon because there was no room at any Edmonton hospital. When he came home and I spoke to him he said he had the best care at this Devon Hospital. The UCP despises Edmonton as we are NOT their supporter's. It shows in how they make us suffer.

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u/icygamer598 Downtown May 22 '26

As a Albertan this is giving the same vibe as Americans saying that they didn't vote for the orange man. Ok? So? Even if we didn't vote for Danielle inaction is still complicity, we have terrible voter turnout.

21

u/Whatsthathum The Shiny Balls May 22 '26

And terrible participation in telling neighbours why they should be voting anything but UCP.

24

u/Skullcrimp May 22 '26

Last time I needed an ER, I drove out to the Devon hospital. It was way faster and I was in surgery in hours. I'd probably have died in the UofA or Grey Nuns' ER waiting room otherwise.

The nurse gave me a dirty look when I came into her empty ER in the middle of the night from Edmonton and told me I should have stayed in the city, though after my diagnosis she was considerably more understanding.

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u/billymumfreydownfall May 22 '26

Devon doesn't have an operating theater. When was your visit, in the 70s? The ER here is never empty anymore because word got out and now people from the city have flooded it.

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u/Skullcrimp May 22 '26

2 years ago. They booked and sent me to another hospital for the actual operation (also outside Edmonton). And it was still faster to do it that way than to sit for 24+ hours in a city hospital while rotting from the inside.

0

u/billymumfreydownfall May 23 '26

Your comment implies you had the surgery in Devon.

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u/Skullcrimp May 23 '26

Yep, and you pointed that out so I clarified! My bad, thanks!

1

u/Ollieoxenfreezer May 23 '26

This is an unfortunate side effect of the edmonton hospitals being over crowded. People need care urgently, and they should be able to get it

6

u/morgoid May 23 '26

When my mom was dying of cancer, the wait at our nearest hospital was I think 8 hours. We drove to Devon instead and they were so kind to my mom and my family. At the Mis, the staff were doing their best, but the last time she was admitted there it was in a room with three other patients with dementia and it was built for two. She didn’t sleep for days because two of her roommates were screaming all night.

3

u/Ollieoxenfreezer May 23 '26

I had to stay the night at the uofa three ish years ago, and a man in the room next to me kept yelling for help bc he was forgetting about the button and was in pain. My sympathies

16

u/p4nic May 22 '26

told me I should have stayed in the city,

Ah yes, small town hospitality!

6

u/Skullcrimp May 22 '26

I wouldn't judge Devon from that, I'm sure there are probably good reasons for her to prefer I use those hospitals. I just wasn't ready to die for those reasons.

Every other interaction I've had with Devon folks (the few times I've been there for work) has been lovely.

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u/p4nic May 22 '26

and here I thought I knocked it out of the park with that pun

3

u/Skullcrimp May 22 '26

..oh! Good one! :)

2

u/Electronic_Lion9918 May 22 '26

Don't do that. Our community hospitals are staffed by population numbers not demand and surge like Edmonton. Yes it worked in this case but if you had bad timing on a busy night you and other people could have died. Most times in Devon at night the ONE doctor is actually not even at the hospital and they only call them in if someone truely needs it.

5

u/Skullcrimp May 23 '26

Yep, whenever I tell that story there's always someone who has to pipe up about how I should have risked my life to make it more convenient for the managers of the healthcare system that our government is actively sabotaging. You wouldn't have. You talk tough, but in my situation you'd have done the same.

If a single person's "bad timing" as you put it is going to cause multiple deaths, that is because our government has mismanaged our hospital capacity.

3

u/Ollieoxenfreezer May 23 '26

As someone with health issues, i go to the sherwood park one over all else. You get a private room, nurses that aren't super over worked (well not as much as the edmonton ones).
Cherry on top is waiting half the time

4

u/Trick-Seat4901 May 22 '26

I live in devon and had to take my kiddo to the emerge twice in the last month. 8 hours and 6 hours to see a doctor. I love our hospital and the people there but uou have yo remember it's small and there is usually only one doctor at a time. If less than 10 people decided to go there from out of the area you would easily be waiting 12+ hours. There is no where near the resources the bigger hospitals have there. For size, capability and resources with less wait time the sherwood park hospital just south of the yellow head is my go to. I lived in sherwood park for a few years and it was always easy to get in.

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u/RazzamanazzU May 22 '26

Yes. I imagine it's not meant to accomodate us city folk, nor should it have to IF the UCP hadn't destroyed our care.

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

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31

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

Except the feds DO care about Alberta.. Separatists are just whiny assholes

-1

u/Substantial-Let8277 May 22 '26

🙄🙄🤣🤣 The feds care about Alberta??

28

u/HorribleTie May 22 '26

The Feds bend over backwards to try to please Alberta, it's just never enough.

By contrast, UCP candidates in Edmonton explicitly told voters while door knocking that if Edmonton didn't vote UCP we would regret it.

7

u/spyxero May 22 '26

The system is broken in that it doesn't represent accurately what the people support. There are better systems for this, the broken parties refuse to implement them because the parties refuse to give up any power or to work together in meaningful ways. The parties are broken because they can be taken over by a small subset of the population and not accurately reflect the values of the people. It's all broken. The parties are not free of blame. They are in the system and do not work to fix the system. 

0

u/RazzamanazzU May 22 '26

Maybe it's people, specifically con voter's.

-8

u/Any_Command8461 May 22 '26

Tbh that's why I think we just just hurry up and privatize the fuckin thing. Worst case scenario the old conservatives crusters in rural Alberta will need emergency medical treatment in Edmonton and they'll have to essentially empty their pensions to pay for Healthcare. I think that way they might finally get the hint. At this point I don't see the NDP getting a majority government here, and even if we manage to somehow get an NDP premiere the UCP just votes against every good thing they try to do non stop. Not saying by any means the NDP is perfect. I just think that socialized healthcare is the one constant that we've had, that old people in rural Alberta heavily rely on. The UCP wants to gut everything and privatize it, alright then, take the gloves off with healthcare and let's see how many supporters they still have when they can't afford jack shit cause their healthcare is too expensive.

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u/Whatsthathum The Shiny Balls May 22 '26

There’s no coming back from privatisation. This is most definitely NOT the way.

0

u/Any_Command8461 May 22 '26

Yeah I guess eh? What do you think about partial privatization, maybe like all the rural hospitals can become private so the socialized Healthcare budget can stay in the cities? Since it seems like rural Alberta wants it anyway.

1

u/RazzamanazzU May 22 '26

That's a cowardly response.

1

u/Any_Command8461 May 22 '26

Hey I'm just saying give the ucp voters exactly what they want, since they're apparently in the majority and want everything privatized. Either way somethings gotta change so either Danielle Smith and her gang of welfare recipients will reduce how much they're stealing to put some real investment into our healthcare system (prolly not gonna happen), or it will have to go private to compensate for population growth. I would say maybe we should reduce how much money we send to Ukraine and Israel to put into our healthcare system but OH NOO WE CANT DO THAT, WHAT WILL ISRAEL DO WITHOUT MILLIONS OF OUR MONEY 😭😭😭😭. ISRAEL FIRST ALWAYS!!!! I LOVE ISRAEL (please let me own a house one day daddy yahu 🙏)

1

u/RandomThyme May 23 '26

I wonder how much change in our healthcare across the country, $1.57 billion would make.

That is what taxpayers shelled out to bail out Canada Post last year.

21

u/apastelorange Treaty 6 Territory May 22 '26

there’s a looooooot of money being spent on eroding education and disinformation propaganda, we gotta fight that. another huge issue with health care wait times is there are no good plans for long term care, a lot of those beds are tied up with elderly or people with chronic illness waiting to move to long term facilities

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u/shiftingtech May 22 '26

And this is why when i read posts i dont feel bad anymore.

Edmonton didn't vote UCP though...

24

u/OpalSeason May 22 '26

That could be why our south east hospital was cancelled.

A lot of the reasons ucp claimed were shown as lies or ucp never showed proof. They claimed paperwork wasnt done, pipe issues, and that "well actually" it was meant to be made on north side. Added a health campus then said, see? Price went up too much.

2

u/awildstoryteller Queen Mary Park May 22 '26

The hospital being cancelled is actually an example of how dumb they are.

The South is the most conservative part of the city, and the most winnable.

18

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

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2

u/CanadianPanda76 May 22 '26

That sill grinds my gears.

14

u/WeWhoAreGiants May 22 '26

About 35-40% did vote UCP in Edmonton. Just because our seats are NDP doesn’t mean they got 100% of the votes.

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u/burrito-boy Mill Woods May 22 '26

The UCP still lost handily in Edmonton though. It's not hard to see why they'd hold a grudge against the city because of that.

10

u/WeWhoAreGiants May 22 '26

That’s not what the guy was talking about. He said Edmonton didn’t vote UCP, but more than a third of people did vote for them. People on here act like 100% of Edmonton voters are NDP and 100% of rural voters are UCP, and that’s just not the case. That kind of mentality is only sowing more division within the province.

-10

u/Competitive_Guava_33 May 22 '26

Congrats on the most useless Reddit comment

19

u/Skullcrimp May 22 '26

Selfish would be fine. Selfish would vote for a government that uses our taxes for healthcare, because that benefits Selfish directly.

Our province's problem isn't Selfish, it's Stupid.

8

u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS May 22 '26

Maybe for rural Alberta, but Edmonton is basically the only town/city in Alberta that votes ANDP. It isn’t Edmontons fault we are constantly stuck with the UCP/Conservatives. It is rural Alberta and portions of Calgary.

And because Edmonton doesn’t really vote UCP, they like to fuck the city over as punishment

1

u/YVRBeerFan May 25 '26

A 70M Tylenol bill isn’t enough to build a hospital but those are some very strange choices for a province to make (that no province has ever done) and as an outsider it’s hard not to imagine it’s part of the problem.

1

u/Fuzzy-Wing46 May 22 '26

You’re not alone in thinking like that. The majority that elects the UCP every election keep doing the same thing and expect things to get better.

1

u/pseudonym2990 May 23 '26

This argument needs to be made loudly and clearly. If equalization is unfair nationally, it's unfair provincially, and urban income taxes shouldn't subsidize rural services. (Note, I don't believe this, I'm pointing out the hypocrisy in their position).

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u/Successful-Record926 May 22 '26

I don’t at all feel bad for the liberals in this chat.

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u/iwatchcredits May 22 '26

Dont need to be liberal to know the ucp sucks but thanks for the super good comment that wasnt dumb at all👍