Alberta Hospital bed cuts raise concerns

The news that acute-care beds will be closed at Alberta Hospital is raising concerns that people with severe mental illness may end up out on the street without proper support.

Last Friday, Alberta Health Services announced it was shrinking the 400-bed psychiatric hospital in northeast Edmonton by moving a yet-to-be-determined number of patients into community-based treatment programs over the next three years.

"I was quite shocked, actually," Colin Simpson, executive director of the Edmonton Support Centre for the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta, said of the announcement.

Simpson fears the move could put more pressure on existing community agencies. He hopes the government will put more money and staff into community treatment programs.

"I think that if we don't get the community services, what's going to happen is people are going to have more relapses and they're going to need more hospital stays and there'll be a greater pressure on those beds," he said.

On Friday, the clinical director for addiction and mental health at Alberta Health Services, Dr. Patrick White, admitted the outside system isn't prepared to take these patients.

However, the transition will take up to three years to implement and there will be a corresponding shift of staff and resources from the hospital into community programs. No one will end up on the streets, White predicted.

The planned changes also raised concerns from the Alberta Union of Public Employees, which represents support workers at Alberta Hospital. "I don't think anyone knows at this point the complete nature of what they're proposing. What will stay and what will go, how many beds will be closed," said AUPE communications director David Climenhaga.

Climenhaga worries the changes will put people who are severely ill on the streets, despite what White insists.

"The effect, practically, of moving treatment of this sort from a well-equipped facility where there's a critical mass of expertise into community facilities, I'm sure, is going to have the effect of making it harder for people to get proper treatment," he said.