Hospitals across the province are feeling a lot of pressure these days with crowded emergency rooms and some places dealing with doctor shortages.
The NDP Shadow Minister for Hospitals, Sarah Hoffman, says while most of the attention has been on the bigger cities, rural communities are also being affected by this.
“We need to make sure we’re staffing rural hospitals as well as the larger urban ones. A couple of the big pressures contributing to that too being a really terrible flu season and less than 20% of Albertans are vaccinated. I remember when I was minister, there was one year it was at 66%.”
The UCP government has stated plans to increase the number of beds and care spaces available, but Hoffman says action is needed to address the problems in health care.
“We need to hire staff. We need to make sure that they’re working to their fullest capacity. (The UCP) loves to say big numbers without actually putting any money behind them to make it a reality. That’s really disrespectful to voters and to patients who are in need of these hospital services.”
You can listen to the full interview below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
