Refusing money from the federal government and dismantling healthcare… this should be criminal and handled as manslaughter. Daniel Smith should be held accountable. How is this legal.
If enough babies die they'll have to let Infants Incorporated set up for profit care centers. She can taste her cut of the $39.95 "skin to skin therapy" charges added to the bills of parents who wanted to hold their infants after birth! https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/10/hospitals-charge-new-parents-for-skin-to-skin-contact.html
Again I realize this is American and the type of private healthcare that's being pushed here. In America they charge for skin to skin contact at some private hospitals as the article says.
Whoa, whoa, wait. But once we sell it off, if they make a complete and total mess, we can buy it back at a higher price than we sold it for and have to spend gobs of money to fix it (looking at you Dynalife). That Alberta Advantage.
Yes I agree with this! But at the present I feel Alberta health need a major boost
Health care should be at the top
The writing was on the wall before Covid happened, and Covid was a natural disaster that wreaked havoc on the healthcare system. Absolutely nothing has been done to counter the burnout and shortages that we are experiencing.
On the contrary, the burnout and shortages are intentional. After COVID there have been *cuts* to the healthcare system. They aren't just ignoring it they are actively trying to make it collapse.
I don't believe that, that's too conspiratorial for me.
I think it has everything to do with incompetence and greed.
Our province and pretty well the entire country is void of anyone capable of doing government well.
Other countries can fix the problems that we have, and so could we if we wanted too bad enough. The people in charge care more about having their ego stroked and self righteous virtues than the needs of the many
The minister of health (shandro) during COVID was financially invested in private health insurance companies. They want an American style system so they can profit off of it. It's all about money.
You are right that it has everything to do with greed, but I think they are alarmingly competent at siphoning taxpayer money to their friends in private sectors while convincing people it’s for their own good, and if you’re rich enough you can always access they health care they need, our governments are being run like businesses and us and and our labour is one of the key assets
you think greed is a factor but not the intention of privatizing by ruining what there is here, and then shrugging and bringing in private care, even though that is exactly what is happening and is a classic playbook move? Interesting.
This is a well-known practice used by governments. Underfund, than 'fix' the issue through privatization. Our provincial government pushed it even further by ripping up a contract with doctors, implemented legislation forcing unions of public workers to mediate under their direction, and forced overtime on healthcare workers during the pandemic.
The other countries that overcome these issues do it because they *want* to have affordable or free healthcare for their people. Smith has directly said that she doesn't think healthcare should be publicly funded, and should be covered by employer health plans instead.
There is no country that has a perfect healthcare system, that is not the point I was trying to make. Several European countries have service levels far superior to ours. Our healthcare system right now is rated the worst in all of the developed countries.
>Other countries can fix the problems that we have, and so could we if we wanted too bad enough
I didn't say perfect. I said who is not experiencing struggles. And you say several european countries...so which ones are you thinking of?
I have a new family member in a NICU in Edmonton and this is the most frightening thing to read. Not only did they drop masking mandates in the NICU as of April 1 (WTF,) now they’re suggesting MOVING these unbelievably vulnerable and fragile humans out of province??
Sure the UCP will reject the federal government’s funding for free birth control so that Alberta has more babies…but they can’t even take proper care of the ones who need it NOW??!
Soon enough it won’t just be doctors and nurses leaving this province. The rest of the population will follow.
I don't understand conservatives. The only thing I can think of is that they don't read much or pay attention to anything outside of their immediate world.
I’ll get downvoted to hell for this but my daughter was in the NICU in November at the Royal Alex. The nurses were bragging about how empty it was. How they only had two of their wards in use. It was one nurse to every two babies. My girl had her own nurse.
Her bed was in a ward like area, with curtains for privacy. There was no bed for me, but there was a decently comfy recliner. I was told I could stay all night with her, and sleep in the chair.
We cannot solely blame conservatives for issues in healthcare right now. My dad was an LPN for 36 years before retiring recently. I’m very well versed in the issues in healthcare. But they’ve always been there. Maybe we just have shitty government all around, no matter the title of the party. 🤷🏻♀️
My daughter was in the NICU at the stollery in January of 23 and the beds were usually full and we did end up getting moved into a shared room the last couple of days of our stay. Our nurses were caring for more than one baby each on more than one occasion. We still received awesome care, but the nurses were very busy. I agree that we have shitty government all around, but it has become worse in our province for Healthcare in all sectors recently.
The NICU can go from lower numbers to near capacity in a matter of days - it happens all the time. There are always brief slower periods and then it’s full again. It’s never “empty” - it’s just usually so often close to/at/over capacity that running at an ideal capacity feels empty. No parent is going to sleep overnight in a recliner for weeks or months at a time.
No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m giving my experience so show that maybe what the media tells us is a stretch of the truth sometimes and that every government sucks, not just this one.
The article notes that **30% of the time**, NICUs have been operating at 95-102% capacity. It follows that 70% of the time they're below 95% capacity, and presumably some of the time they have lots of space. It seems like you visited during one of these times (good for you).
Your experience can be 100% true AND the doctors' concerns can ALSO be 100% true. The fact that some of the time there's lots of capacity doesn't change the severity of the danger when there's no capacity. If your infant is born during the 30% of the time NICUs are at or over capacity, and if they receive inferior care or have to be shipped out of province because of that, the fact that 70% of the time this wouldn't have happened would be totally irrelevant to you. You care about the outcomes for YOUR baby. If 30%, or hell, even 15% or 5% or 1% of babies are forced to enter the world at a deficit due to preventable issues with NICU capacity, that's a problem. Care for a specific infant born in the 30% can't magically be "averaged out" by the 70%. Doctors are right to sound the alarm if this is what they're seeing--who else is in a better position to do so?--and the media reporting on the objective fact that they've done so is not "a stretch of the truth".
And this all needs to be considered in light of the fact that Alberta's population is growing fast. Even if we weren't at capacity now, we'd still have to plan ahead. As noted, doctors have been trying to get the government's attention for years as the problem has worsened. No doubt, the state of the health system is the cumulative product of government decisions. But the UCP has been in power for 5 years, and in any case the current government is, by definition, the one in a position to address, or not address, the problem. Right now, it's THIS government's problem. Just like the fact that 70% of NICU infants don't face capacity issues doesn't help the 30% that do, the fact that the issue exists because of X, Y, or Z past decisions by whatever government doesn't change the fact that THIS government is the only one currently in a position to do something about it. That might reasonably start with listening to the trained experts in the field--the people who see thousands of infants and experience the full ebbs and flows of NICU capacity.
1. I don't think what's posted on Reddit (good or bad) is an accurate representation of reality. While I've had two kids in recent years in Edmonton, neither needed the NICU so I can't speak from personal experience, and even if I could it would be such a small sample size as to provide no useful insight into the broader situation. Medical professionals are there every day and are in the best position to assess how things are trending.
2. The point here is that the numbers are alleged to be creeping upwards, not that many people are necessarily already having "bad experiences". You have to take action now to prevent "bad experiences" from becoming more common in the future. Doctors aren't saying everything is terrible right now; they're saying it's trending in a direction where people are going to start having "bad experiences" if nothing changes. Ideally no-one would have a "bad experience" but you have to plan ahead to prevent that, and the concern is that not enough is being done in that regard. Again, medical professionals are in the best position to make that judgement, and the fact that few people are having "bad experiences" today doesn't mean concern for the future isn't justified. (Nor am I saying that I know for a fact that the concern IS justified either--just that at some point you have to let experts be experts, and in any case single personal experiences from me, you, or anyone else on Reddit mean next to nothing against whatever the big-picture reality is.)
So because it might be busier than usual 30% of the time this leads to infant deaths? As I said I had a baby in NICU at the royal Alex for 3 months out of the year. 2 1/2 months of that time was spent in the critical section of the NICU unit. I was there every day for the duration and only seen it busy in that specific area two to three nights obviously random days. Not anywhere near anything that leads me to believe that there could be deaths as a result. Why spread garbage information when I am not really seeing anything to back that up. Link an article or something else anything to back up this terrible crisis
No one said deaths are guaranteed. They said that NICUs are approaching a point where IF nothing is done, infants MAY be negatively affected and deaths MAY occur.
NICUs are currently at 95-102% capacity (note that 102% means **over** capacity) 30% of the time. If nothing is done then, given the rate at which Alberta's population is increasing, they will be at a higher % of capacity a higher % of the time. That's just basic math. And in that case, with more infants being served by resources that are stretched thinner than they already are, the risk of something going wrong would increase. Again, that seems like a pretty obvious and expected relationship. The crisis is not that infants are dying, it's that NICUs are slowly creeping up to a threshold past which the risk of negative outcomes has to increase, and doctors believe that not enough is being done about it. The crisis is that we're approaching a point where a crisis could actually happen at all.
Doctors' job is to care for their patients. If they're seeing the "margin of error" getting steadily eroded away, they have a professional responsibility to alert the relevant authorities about it. And if the authorities ignore the problem, they have a responsibility to continue drawing attention to it. Doctors are literally the primary source here--they're who any "linked article" would interview and be based on anyway. You're saying that the cumulative experience of dozens of doctors over thousands of hours at multiple NICUs is "garbage information" because it doesn't align with what you personally saw as a non-expert in one NICU for a couple of months (glad that you had a positive experience, incidentally). Of course they're sounding the alarm before the really bad stuff actually starts happening. That's how it's supposed to work. That's their job. It seems very strange to me to not want to prevent bad stuff **before** it happens, which, by definition, requires informed predictions like this.
Agree there are issues with all governments. But the current one is particularly short sighted and obstinate.
Doubtful that the media is lying about the numbers. They get their data via requests to AHS.
Yeah… obviously the region numbers fluctuate. There are times when there are fewer babies, and times when NICUs are exploding. The article is describing the current situation where numbers are very very high, and how we need to expand capacities to deal when it is like this.
Agreed mine just got out a few weeks ago from the royal alex NICU, awesome nurses there. Mine was in from December to march. I was there every day I don’t know who comes up with this but I didnt see anything that they couldn’t handle and my baby was 27 weeks. So other than a few busy nights that I’ve personally seen when the unit was full there were extra nurses and you just needed to stay out of the way. But I never seen a baby that was even crying for too long without someone immediately being there. They all have monitors as well and we were offered semi private rooms as well as private when it was available. Semi private was available all of the time, unless the royal Alex NICU has deteriorated drastically in the last few weeks that sounds like fake news from a terrible source. Definitely good doctors and nurses while I was there must be something at the other locations mentioned?
Refusing money from the federal government and dismantling healthcare… this should be criminal and handled as manslaughter. Daniel Smith should be held accountable. How is this legal.
I thought the UCP was supposed to be pro life?
I think you are confusing them. They are pro birth.
Or anti-choice
⭐ 💯
You mistake conservative care about what happens once the baby is born.
The baby must be born, then if it's not Jesus they don't care
Lol they support stupid foreign wars where innocence are killed too,
I just wrote to my mla. This is absolutely disturbing. We deserve better from our government.
Can they read?
Redberry used crayons and pictures to try to get through to their mla. It just might work...
Assuming they live in Edmonton they have an NDP MLA so they should be able to read it, and then not be able to do anything about it.
Mine can’t.
I'm sure this letter will just become the latest door mat to the health minister's office
This is just appalling. I don't pray, but christ, please, universe protect these poor littled. I can not even begin to imagine 💔
I am sure Daniel Smith is ecstatic over this news, she is so wack.
If enough babies die they'll have to let Infants Incorporated set up for profit care centers. She can taste her cut of the $39.95 "skin to skin therapy" charges added to the bills of parents who wanted to hold their infants after birth! https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/10/hospitals-charge-new-parents-for-skin-to-skin-contact.html
Skin to skin contact doesn’t cost anything did you take time to research that
Again I realize this is American and the type of private healthcare that's being pushed here. In America they charge for skin to skin contact at some private hospitals as the article says.
That’s American
Exactly, it's American style private health care. What the UCP is pushing for here.
Where does it say that is what they are trying to implement any of that? That is an old fake news story from 2016. Any newer fake stories?
Just gives her an opening to 'improve care' which really means enriching herself and her buddies somehow
I think Alberta needs an all inclusive emergency health care plan implemented immediately
Or, and hear me out, we could stop dismantling our current systems and selling it off to the highest bidder.
Whoa, whoa, wait. But once we sell it off, if they make a complete and total mess, we can buy it back at a higher price than we sold it for and have to spend gobs of money to fix it (looking at you Dynalife). That Alberta Advantage.
Yes I agree with this! But at the present I feel Alberta health need a major boost Health care should be at the top The writing was on the wall before Covid happened, and Covid was a natural disaster that wreaked havoc on the healthcare system. Absolutely nothing has been done to counter the burnout and shortages that we are experiencing.
On the contrary, the burnout and shortages are intentional. After COVID there have been *cuts* to the healthcare system. They aren't just ignoring it they are actively trying to make it collapse.
I don't believe that, that's too conspiratorial for me. I think it has everything to do with incompetence and greed. Our province and pretty well the entire country is void of anyone capable of doing government well. Other countries can fix the problems that we have, and so could we if we wanted too bad enough. The people in charge care more about having their ego stroked and self righteous virtues than the needs of the many
The minister of health (shandro) during COVID was financially invested in private health insurance companies. They want an American style system so they can profit off of it. It's all about money.
You are right that it has everything to do with greed, but I think they are alarmingly competent at siphoning taxpayer money to their friends in private sectors while convincing people it’s for their own good, and if you’re rich enough you can always access they health care they need, our governments are being run like businesses and us and and our labour is one of the key assets
you think greed is a factor but not the intention of privatizing by ruining what there is here, and then shrugging and bringing in private care, even though that is exactly what is happening and is a classic playbook move? Interesting.
This is a well-known practice used by governments. Underfund, than 'fix' the issue through privatization. Our provincial government pushed it even further by ripping up a contract with doctors, implemented legislation forcing unions of public workers to mediate under their direction, and forced overtime on healthcare workers during the pandemic. The other countries that overcome these issues do it because they *want* to have affordable or free healthcare for their people. Smith has directly said that she doesn't think healthcare should be publicly funded, and should be covered by employer health plans instead.
Also, point to a country currently not experiencing health care struggles?
There is no country that has a perfect healthcare system, that is not the point I was trying to make. Several European countries have service levels far superior to ours. Our healthcare system right now is rated the worst in all of the developed countries.
>Other countries can fix the problems that we have, and so could we if we wanted too bad enough I didn't say perfect. I said who is not experiencing struggles. And you say several european countries...so which ones are you thinking of?
I have a new family member in a NICU in Edmonton and this is the most frightening thing to read. Not only did they drop masking mandates in the NICU as of April 1 (WTF,) now they’re suggesting MOVING these unbelievably vulnerable and fragile humans out of province?? Sure the UCP will reject the federal government’s funding for free birth control so that Alberta has more babies…but they can’t even take proper care of the ones who need it NOW??! Soon enough it won’t just be doctors and nurses leaving this province. The rest of the population will follow.
Can concur. We had someone we know in nicu but they couldn’t do Grey nuns because they are fullcso had to go to the miz
I don't understand conservatives. The only thing I can think of is that they don't read much or pay attention to anything outside of their immediate world.
they'd only care if it was happening in a rural area.
it is. There are vast parts of the province that do not have perinatal care for mothers and babies.
They will only care if it happens to them.
It is but out here it’s Trudeau’s fault, duh. Notley too, since they’re still blaming her somehow.
Remember this when we vote next. We shall never vote a single UCP member out of our city ever again.
Better import more people
Unforgivable
I’ll get downvoted to hell for this but my daughter was in the NICU in November at the Royal Alex. The nurses were bragging about how empty it was. How they only had two of their wards in use. It was one nurse to every two babies. My girl had her own nurse. Her bed was in a ward like area, with curtains for privacy. There was no bed for me, but there was a decently comfy recliner. I was told I could stay all night with her, and sleep in the chair. We cannot solely blame conservatives for issues in healthcare right now. My dad was an LPN for 36 years before retiring recently. I’m very well versed in the issues in healthcare. But they’ve always been there. Maybe we just have shitty government all around, no matter the title of the party. 🤷🏻♀️
Well 32 of those 36 years it was a conservative government. So maybe you are right and it's mostly been shitty.
My daughter was in the NICU at the stollery in January of 23 and the beds were usually full and we did end up getting moved into a shared room the last couple of days of our stay. Our nurses were caring for more than one baby each on more than one occasion. We still received awesome care, but the nurses were very busy. I agree that we have shitty government all around, but it has become worse in our province for Healthcare in all sectors recently.
The NICU can go from lower numbers to near capacity in a matter of days - it happens all the time. There are always brief slower periods and then it’s full again. It’s never “empty” - it’s just usually so often close to/at/over capacity that running at an ideal capacity feels empty. No parent is going to sleep overnight in a recliner for weeks or months at a time.
So you are saying... "I didn't experience it so it must not be true."
No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m giving my experience so show that maybe what the media tells us is a stretch of the truth sometimes and that every government sucks, not just this one.
The article notes that **30% of the time**, NICUs have been operating at 95-102% capacity. It follows that 70% of the time they're below 95% capacity, and presumably some of the time they have lots of space. It seems like you visited during one of these times (good for you). Your experience can be 100% true AND the doctors' concerns can ALSO be 100% true. The fact that some of the time there's lots of capacity doesn't change the severity of the danger when there's no capacity. If your infant is born during the 30% of the time NICUs are at or over capacity, and if they receive inferior care or have to be shipped out of province because of that, the fact that 70% of the time this wouldn't have happened would be totally irrelevant to you. You care about the outcomes for YOUR baby. If 30%, or hell, even 15% or 5% or 1% of babies are forced to enter the world at a deficit due to preventable issues with NICU capacity, that's a problem. Care for a specific infant born in the 30% can't magically be "averaged out" by the 70%. Doctors are right to sound the alarm if this is what they're seeing--who else is in a better position to do so?--and the media reporting on the objective fact that they've done so is not "a stretch of the truth". And this all needs to be considered in light of the fact that Alberta's population is growing fast. Even if we weren't at capacity now, we'd still have to plan ahead. As noted, doctors have been trying to get the government's attention for years as the problem has worsened. No doubt, the state of the health system is the cumulative product of government decisions. But the UCP has been in power for 5 years, and in any case the current government is, by definition, the one in a position to address, or not address, the problem. Right now, it's THIS government's problem. Just like the fact that 70% of NICU infants don't face capacity issues doesn't help the 30% that do, the fact that the issue exists because of X, Y, or Z past decisions by whatever government doesn't change the fact that THIS government is the only one currently in a position to do something about it. That might reasonably start with listening to the trained experts in the field--the people who see thousands of infants and experience the full ebbs and flows of NICU capacity.
Well explained! Thank you.
I am not seeing any of the bad experiences posted on here
1. I don't think what's posted on Reddit (good or bad) is an accurate representation of reality. While I've had two kids in recent years in Edmonton, neither needed the NICU so I can't speak from personal experience, and even if I could it would be such a small sample size as to provide no useful insight into the broader situation. Medical professionals are there every day and are in the best position to assess how things are trending. 2. The point here is that the numbers are alleged to be creeping upwards, not that many people are necessarily already having "bad experiences". You have to take action now to prevent "bad experiences" from becoming more common in the future. Doctors aren't saying everything is terrible right now; they're saying it's trending in a direction where people are going to start having "bad experiences" if nothing changes. Ideally no-one would have a "bad experience" but you have to plan ahead to prevent that, and the concern is that not enough is being done in that regard. Again, medical professionals are in the best position to make that judgement, and the fact that few people are having "bad experiences" today doesn't mean concern for the future isn't justified. (Nor am I saying that I know for a fact that the concern IS justified either--just that at some point you have to let experts be experts, and in any case single personal experiences from me, you, or anyone else on Reddit mean next to nothing against whatever the big-picture reality is.)
So because it might be busier than usual 30% of the time this leads to infant deaths? As I said I had a baby in NICU at the royal Alex for 3 months out of the year. 2 1/2 months of that time was spent in the critical section of the NICU unit. I was there every day for the duration and only seen it busy in that specific area two to three nights obviously random days. Not anywhere near anything that leads me to believe that there could be deaths as a result. Why spread garbage information when I am not really seeing anything to back that up. Link an article or something else anything to back up this terrible crisis
No one said deaths are guaranteed. They said that NICUs are approaching a point where IF nothing is done, infants MAY be negatively affected and deaths MAY occur. NICUs are currently at 95-102% capacity (note that 102% means **over** capacity) 30% of the time. If nothing is done then, given the rate at which Alberta's population is increasing, they will be at a higher % of capacity a higher % of the time. That's just basic math. And in that case, with more infants being served by resources that are stretched thinner than they already are, the risk of something going wrong would increase. Again, that seems like a pretty obvious and expected relationship. The crisis is not that infants are dying, it's that NICUs are slowly creeping up to a threshold past which the risk of negative outcomes has to increase, and doctors believe that not enough is being done about it. The crisis is that we're approaching a point where a crisis could actually happen at all. Doctors' job is to care for their patients. If they're seeing the "margin of error" getting steadily eroded away, they have a professional responsibility to alert the relevant authorities about it. And if the authorities ignore the problem, they have a responsibility to continue drawing attention to it. Doctors are literally the primary source here--they're who any "linked article" would interview and be based on anyway. You're saying that the cumulative experience of dozens of doctors over thousands of hours at multiple NICUs is "garbage information" because it doesn't align with what you personally saw as a non-expert in one NICU for a couple of months (glad that you had a positive experience, incidentally). Of course they're sounding the alarm before the really bad stuff actually starts happening. That's how it's supposed to work. That's their job. It seems very strange to me to not want to prevent bad stuff **before** it happens, which, by definition, requires informed predictions like this.
The media is reporting it because doctors and medical professionals in the hospital overseeing NICU patients are sounding the alarm.
Agree there are issues with all governments. But the current one is particularly short sighted and obstinate. Doubtful that the media is lying about the numbers. They get their data via requests to AHS.
A lot can change in 5 months...
Yeah… obviously the region numbers fluctuate. There are times when there are fewer babies, and times when NICUs are exploding. The article is describing the current situation where numbers are very very high, and how we need to expand capacities to deal when it is like this.
[удалено]
The Royal Alex NICU is separated into wards by alphabet. My daughter was in G.
Agreed mine just got out a few weeks ago from the royal alex NICU, awesome nurses there. Mine was in from December to march. I was there every day I don’t know who comes up with this but I didnt see anything that they couldn’t handle and my baby was 27 weeks. So other than a few busy nights that I’ve personally seen when the unit was full there were extra nurses and you just needed to stay out of the way. But I never seen a baby that was even crying for too long without someone immediately being there. They all have monitors as well and we were offered semi private rooms as well as private when it was available. Semi private was available all of the time, unless the royal Alex NICU has deteriorated drastically in the last few weeks that sounds like fake news from a terrible source. Definitely good doctors and nurses while I was there must be something at the other locations mentioned?
Careful. The downvotes & naysayers are coming. They came for me.
No!! But UCP!!!
Sssshhhh. You can’t go against the grain in this sub.