Despite a year's worth of lobby efforts by a group of local Doctors and health care professionals that also gained the support of Red Deer City Council, another major blow this week for the Red Deer Regional Hospital with word it once again did not make Alberta Health Services latest urgent priority capital project list.

Orthopedic Surgeon at the hospital, Dr. Keith Wolstenholme explains the factors that contributed to that decision.

“What we’re told is that we need more planning documents done before we can proceed with what’s called a business case and really what we need to achieve is the business case which needs to be done before almost any project will be funded.  Unfortunately we have had 15 years of planning documents leading up to this moment and Alberta Health Services was supposed to have two further documents done in the fall of 2017, unfortunately neither of those are done yet”.

The two documents AHS has yet to complete are an update to the 2015 needs assessment, and a provincial cardiac services plan.

The 2015 needs assessment at that time showed the Red Deer Hospital was 114 beds short and 3 operating rooms short, and Wolstenholme says not making the project list means no relief in sight for considerable strain on hospital services.

“What we’re left with in the meantime is occasional 12 hour waits in the emergency department, elective surgeries being cancelled, patients being treated in hallways, being treated in tub rooms and shower rooms, TV rooms, we’re just really strapped as it is”.

The latest urgent priority list includes 9 recommended projects, none of which are in the central zone.

In terms of what's next, Wolstenholme says they are hard at work forming a non-profit society.

“March 1st Friends of Central Alberta Healthcare will be official and we’ll be looking to name a Board of Directors, and we’ll be looking to apply as much pressure as we can politically and onto Alberta Health Services to try to get our story out there, to try to get the decision makers to understand really the dire straits the Red Deer Regional Hospital faces on a daily basis due to being under resourced to serve the population we’ve been asked to serve”.

He encourages the public to keep applying pressure to their local politicians and Alberta Health Services.