Thread by @AntibioticDoc

TL;DR: Alberta would need 11 hospitals in Edmonton and Calgary to be resourced to the Canadian average.
1/6 🏥 Why is Alberta’s healthcare system under such strain? It’s not "management"—it’s a numbers problem 40 years in the making. Let’s look at the data. 🧵 #AbLeg #CdnHealth

2/6 If you want ALL the gory details I have them written down here, btw - work in progress: ).

Basically, decades-long policy of "efficiency" has left no surge capacity: our system works brilliantly on a Tuesday in May, but breaks every December.medium.com/@AntibioticDoc…

3/6 📉 The Bed Gap: In 1980, Canada had 6.75 beds per 1,000 people. Today, Alberta’s big cities are down to ~1.4. That’s the same ratio as India or Syria. Meanwhile, Germany sits at 7.8. We are forced to run "lean" to the point of breaking.

4/6 🛑 The "Exit" Block: Between 20% and 37% of our hospital beds are filled with patients waiting for long-term care (ALC). When the "exit" is blocked, the Emergency Room becomes a parking lot. "Hallway medicine" is terrible for patients and heartbreaking for healthcare workers.

5/6 🏆 The Paradox: Despite this, Albertans have better cancer survival rates than the UK or Germany. My colleagues are putting it all out, all the time for our patients, with ZERO surge capacity. We have 102-120% occupancy daily. The goal for function and cost savings is 85%.

6/6 Problem: Deliberate downsizing ("efficiency") since the 1980s. Now Canada runs the lowest "curative" beds in the G7, and Calgary and Edmonton (1.4 beds/1000) sit near India and Bolivia- we could manage it because of good primary care, but we're underresourcing that too.

6/6 ✅ The Fix:
1️⃣ Acknowledge we need to catch up, then match population growth
2️⃣ Long-Term Care patients need LTC beds
3️⃣ Recognize the real costs of running at >100%
HCW burning out to prevent terribly substandard care is not a long-term plan.

Bonus Math: Canada- avg 2.5 beds/1000, OECD/international avg 3.5/1000, Edm/Calgary 1.5 beds/1000: 3800 beds to get to Can avg, 7,295 to OECD average, optimal community hospital size is 300-400 beds.
Each hospital: 2500-3200 people: nurses, doctors, plus other HCW/staff.

Bonus Comment: Don't get hung up on math. Big picture example: government has not built a hospital in Edmonton since 1988, our population has more than doubled, and we are a referral centre. This has been predictable, predicted, and not dealt with for a looooong time.