Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Thanksgiving weekend something horrible happened. A young mother in her youthful prime had a stroke, and because of her condition level, she needed to be sent to an Edmonton hospital to meet her needs. So she was medevacked to Edmonton Monday night and arrived around 11 p.m. with her daughter and three month old nursing son in tow.
As anyone can imagine, this is a difficult situation, but what can be noted here at this specific point is that it has the appearance that the system may be working. That is, you get sick, and the publicly funded system, via taxpayer dollars, is there to care for you when you need it most.
However, this is where the system did not work, because when this mother needed it most, it seems to have fallen off the rails. When she got to the Edmonton hospital, there was no room to forward her to. When she got there, she spent the remainder of that evening and most of the next day in emergency. In total, she sat there almost 19 hours in the emergency room — again, with two in tow.
I don’t know what the reasonable level of health care is and how it would be defined by our Health Minister, but, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that if we stepped outside of this building, no one on these streets would tell you that waiting 19 hours in emergency is considered a reasonable level of care considering our taxpayer dollars are paying for something much better.
Why do I keep pointing to 19 hours? Well, that’s when an enclosure in the emergency room was found. I don’t know where it may have been. Maybe it had been lost. To be honest, Mr. Speaker, I don’t even know what an enclosure is. Is it a broom closet? Is it a coffee room? Is it a storeroom? I just don’t know. Again, this is not a reasonable level of care that I would normally define. I only wish the story ended there, Mr. Speaker.
So this woman with a stroke, two in tow, waited 15 more hours in the enclosure. But I’m pleased to say, that as of 9 o’clock this morning, after 34 hours of this whole ordeal, she finally received a room.
Now, this is very important. As I’ve come to understand the situation, a memo had been forwarded to the Health Minister almost two weeks ago saying that there were no rooms available. That’s two weeks ago. How can that be? How can we leave health care to chance? Mr. Speaker, this stresses me out just thinking about this statement. How do you think the husband felt? How do you think she felt? How do you think her children felt? No one should feel abandoned by our system, certainly not like this.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
Unanimous consent granted.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. So what happened? Why were there no rooms available? There is more than one hospital in Edmonton that I’m familiar with. Where is the assistance from our northern nurses who work down there to make sure our northern patients are taken care of? What about that great arrangement we have with Capital Health? We pay them. What are they doing? At this moment I’m not sure. It sounds like they’re not doing their job.
So what is the problem? What was the plan? Knowing full well that there might not be room, why did we send her? Why didn’t we send her to Calgary?
Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to have wait six to nine weeks for an answer from the Health Minister on this situation, but I can guarantee you that this family deserves a written apology and a public statement saying that this level of care will not be delivered to anyone and that this is not a reasonable level of service for anyone to receive in the future.
Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Health Minister later today. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
