The head of Emergency Medicine at the Rockyview Hospital says the wait lines for emergency care are still too long but the situation is improving.
Dr. Grant Innes says the situation has finally turned around and that his research shows access to emergency care is getting better.
“We're not providing the level of care that we would like to provide but we're getting closer to it, and this has reversed a decade long trend of worsening and worsening response times and now we're actually going the other direction,” said Dr. Innes.
Michelle, is an operating room nurse, who became an emergency patient when she broke her ankle.
She says she knows she will probably wait for surgery but that emergency care was there for her when she needed it.
“We’ve had to use the hospital system a couple of times and I firmly believe that when you need help you get it,” said Michelle.
Dr. Innes works at all three adult hospitals in Calgary and agrees that patients who need help, get it.
He says that there is a misconception that people with minor ailments are tying up beds.
“We don't put people with sore throats and ankle sprains in our stretchers and hospital beds, so they’re just not the problem,” said Dr. Innes.
Dr. Innes says the data on our changing wait times, is actually getting a lot of international attention from other doctors trying to fix health care problems in their countries.
