New rapid transfer units aim to free up ER space

Alberta Health Services is starting a five-month pilot project to free up ambulances and space in two Edmonton emergency departments.

"(AHS) is looking at how we can smooth out the approach to patient care, " said AHS presidentVickieKaminski.

"Everyone is concerned about it."

The project will see two rapid transfer" units,with eight to 15 beds and staffed with nurses and other health care staff,set up at the University of Alberta and Royal Alexandra Hospitals.

Patients being brought to the ER by ambulance can be placed there, freeing EMTs from having to sit in the ER with them for hours, waiting for them to be seen.

"These changes ... will help EMS crewsget back int he road and back into their communities much sooner," Kaminski said.

Patients who need to be admitted into the hospital and those awaiting discharge or transfer to another hospital will go thereas well.

Kaminski said the province's medical facilities are severely overcrowded, working at over 100 per cent capacity. She says the pilot project aims at putting some flexibility into the health care system.

"Truly, I don't think we'll ever get to an 85 per cent occupancy rate. Those days are probably gone. But if we could smooth it out so that we at least have 98 per cent occupancy and then an occasional blip where we have too many patients, that's waybetter than what we have now."

The $2.1 million needed to fund the project will come out of the existing AHS budget.

The two rapid transfer units will open over the next six weeks. If successful, they will be expanded the across the province.

AHS is also continuing another initiative at other hospitals where one EMT stays with several patients in the ER in order to free up other EMTs.

Kaminski said she hopes the changes will also help deal with morale problems among health care workers who are working in overcrowded facilities.