Hospitals across Alberta, particularly in the Edmonton zone, are facing unprecedented strain — prompting doctors to urge the provincial government to declare a state of emergency for the health-care system.
“Demand for health care is exceeding our ability to supply care in critically ill patients. In the medical community, we call that a disaster,” Dr. Raj Sherman said on Friday.
“We have a medical disaster on our hands in Edmonton.”
Speaking outside the Royal Alexandra Hospital on Friday, the emergency physician says conditions are the worst he’s seen in his 35-year medical career.
“The state of the acute care system in the Edmonton zone is an absolute crisis. I have never seen it this bad,” Sherman said, warning that overcrowding is putting lives at risk.
“Our hospitals are plugged up with very sick patients, and as well we have a lot of patients who are fragile and vulnerable,” he said.
According to Sherman, hospitals in the Edmonton Zone have been operating in crisis at more than 100 per cent capacity since August, well before the respiratory virus season kicked into high gear.
“Now that the flu’s hit, things have gone from a crisis into an absolute disaster mode.”
Part of the issue is ALC — alternate level of care — patients, many of whom are fragile seniors, in hospitals who Sherman said should instead be in places like long-term care, assisted living, rehab care or receive home care.
Because all the available beds in hospitals are already full, emergency patients who need to be admitted end up staying in E.R. longer than necessary.
Sherman said the department then becomes a holding area for admitted people.
“Two days ago we had 255 admitted people out of 275 ER beds,” Sherman said on Friday, saying that then leaves critically ill patients stuck in the waiting room.
“We can’t look after new emergencies and there’s no flow happening. The Edmonton acute care system has ground to a halt.”
Sherman’s plea comes a day after Paul Parks, president-elect of the emergency physicians’ section of the Alberta Medical Association, pleaded with the province to declare a state of emergency for hospitals across the province.
Long wait times in the E.R., code reds when there are no ambulances available, lengthy waits for surgeries and tests, patients doubled or quadrupled up in hospital rooms, and more sick people than beds to put them in is, sadly, nothing new in Alberta — it’s been a growing issue for over a decade.
But doctors with decades of experience say right now is the worst they’ve seen in their career.
Every day across Alberta, physicians say there’s hundreds of sick or injured people sitting in waiting rooms or laying on stretchers in hospital hallways, waiting their turn for desperately-needed care.
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At the same time, the province has spent recent years dismantling the province-wide, all-encompassing Alberta Health Services provider into four different agencies — which former Alberta chief medical officer of health Dr. James Talbot says hasn’t helped.
“It is clear we need more continuing-care beds in the system with an aging population. Almost nothing’s been done on that,” Talbot said on Friday.
“Instead, they rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic by splitting the system up, which actually made things worse.”
AHS is now splintered off into four different agencies — Acute Care Alberta (hospitals, surgeries), Primary Care Alberta (day-to-day health), Recovery Alberta (mental health/addiction), and Assisted Living Alberta (long-term care/support).
Acute Care Alberta said in 2024/25, there were approximately 2.3 million emergency department and urgent care centre visits across Alberta and of those, about 1,330 deaths were reported.
The province noted the deaths include people who arrived in critical or life-threatening condition and succumbed to their illness or injury, which Sherman recognizes comes with the territory in an E.R.
“Look, we get patients who come in with a critical illness and people die. But then we have people who wait for eight hours with chest pain, and they have something that we can prevent and save them from — but they should not wait eight hours when they’re critically ill,” Sherman said.
“We have a lot of preventable harm in delays in care.”
While the province has attributed the pressure to the respiratory virus season, doctors argue the problem is deeper and has been building for months.
“The government thinks this is just a flu, and I don’t believe they think it’s a crisis,” Sherman said. He doesn’t think the decision-makers at the top of government are being given an accurate picture of how bad it is on the ground.
“Inaction is causing there to be medical harm, preventable deaths, and legal liability to the taxpayer. The financial cost of the lawsuits that will result from the government not acting — providing timely care to critically ill patients — will be astounding.”
The issue gained wider attention following the death of 44-year-old Prashant Sreekumar, who died just before Christmas while waiting to see a doctor at Grey Nuns Community Hospital.
Sherman says two other people also died in the same waiting room that day.
“People are dying to get into care.”
The Ministry of Hospital and Surgical Health Services on Thursday acknowledged long emergency department wait times remain a serious concern but said calls for a public health state of emergency “are misguided and would add nothing to what is already being done.”
Sherman disagrees, saying the reason doctors are asking for one is to trigger a centralized and coordinated response to address the overwhelmed system.
“We’re asking for a command and control centre that can coordinate the functioning of all five hospitals in Edmonton and coordinate discharges of fragile seniors out of hospital, so we can provide safe and timely care,” Sherman said.
Talbot says a formal state of emergency would signal that the government recognizes the seriousness of the situation.
“That stress is extraordinary, and it would show they are committing to putting the resources necessary in place to get us through this crisis,” Talbot said.
He also pointed out how extraordinary it is for emergency physicians to ask for help.
“These highly-trained professionals who are very immune to panic — I’ve worked with a tonne of emerg. physicians and they are not the kind of people to overcall things,” Talbot said.
“Just admitting that there’s a problem would go a long ways to improving morale.”
Sherman acknowledges the province is making efforts but insists immediate action is required to prevent further deaths. A solution he is pushing for is faster patient discharges.
“We need to start discharging people seven days a week, 24/7, if they don’t need to be in hospital,” he said. “That way, emergency departments can start functioning again.”
Sherman said without changes, overcrowded emergency rooms will remain a dangerous reality for patients across the province.
“We can’t wait another day. This needs to be done now.”
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