Key takeaways:
- The Health Minister tells the COVID-19 situation emphasized adding more beds fast.
- Healthcare workers offer care for a COVID-19 patient in an Alberta ICU.
Crucial beds to be added by the Alberta Government:
Alberta’s health minister tells the government will expend $300 million to add more critical care beds in hospitals over the following three years.
Jason Copping states $100 million of that will be paid this year to make 50 permanent ICU beds across the region.
Copping tells the COVID-19 situation, which devastated existing intensive care departments, underscored the requirement to add more beds quickly.
“It did teach us a helpful lesson. Alberta requires more healthcare capacity,” Copping informed journalists in Lethbridge Wednesday.
“We need the flexibility to treat those who reach into our medical clinics and hospitals, as well as to react to waves generated by unexpected circumstances like COVID-19.”
Details being specified by AHS.
Details of when and where the beds will be put up are being performed out under the supervision of Alberta Health Services.
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Alberta had 173 critical care beds before the pandemic but had to drastically ramp up essential care spaces to meet the rushing need as numerous waves of COVID-19 impact.
The Armed Forces had to be called in to help.
Copping stated due to temporary measures by the health team and increasing vaccination rates, the system was never swamped to the point where doctors would have had to choose which patients got life-saving care and which did not.
Most of the new funds are to hire a team for the beds and prepare how to redeploy health workers when ICU need is slow.
“We hope these new beds to come online soon in the forthcoming months,” he stated.
Spending streams from funding
The spending flows from the prior week’s offered 2022-23 budget, which adds $600 million to the health operating budget, a responsibility growing to $1.8 billion in 2024-25.
Source – cbc.ca
