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Red Deer Advocate MONDAY, JAN. 20, 2014
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Some surgery waits still too long PERFORMANCE REPORTS LATE BY SUSAN ZIELINSKI ADVOCATE STAFF Performance reports on health care in Alberta are
over four months late and Liberals say lengthy wait times for some surgery may be one of the reasons. Liberals said charts on the Alberta Health website show wait times for urgent bypasses, hip and knee replacements, and cataract surgeries were often severely longer than the
provincial target. In the second quarter of 2013, 90 per cent of knee replacement surgery was done within 43.1 weeks while the provincial target is 28 weeks. Ninety per cent of patients had hip surgery in 37.8 weeks, but the target is 22 weeks.
Cataract patients had surgery in 30 weeks, but the target wait time is 25 weeks. The wait time target for urgent bypasses is one week and 90 per cent were performed within 2.1 weeks. “This is a government that loves to brag and put signs up all over the province even
before laws are passed. You can rest assured if they were even near meeting the targets there would have been reports and signs all over the province,” said Alberta Liberal leader Raj Sherman on Thursday.
Please see HEALTH on Page A2
MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY
Space crunch unresolved CITY LOOKING AT BROADER PICTURE BY CRYSTAL RHYNO ADVOCATE STAFF
had AMA,” said Dahl, who doesn’t have AMA. Eventually her elderly neighbour, who uses a cane; her daughter and another person helped push Dahl out. A single parent, Dahl can’t go grocery shopping or to the mall alone. She can’t wheel herself anywhere because snow is dumped on the sidewalk. “My neighbour went and bought a shovel, across the hall went and bought a shovel, the guy upstairs went and bought a shovel because the sidewalks aren’t shoveled here so I can get to work in the morning,” said Dahl. “They don’t start (shovelling) until 9 or 10.”
Staff at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery are regrouping after their $240,000 request to address the museum’s space crunch was refused by city council. Lorna Johnson, MAG executive director, said they were not entirely surprised that council turned them down. “Given some of the smaller requests that were refused, it wasn’t really surprising,” said Johnson. “But we wanted to put the concept on the table so we can begin discussion about it.” Council reasoned that it was premature to make a decision for the storage needs of the museum collection without seeing the overall broader strategy that would include the city archives and records. The MAG, which has been struggling with a space crunch, had requested $240,000 from the city to hire two additional staff who would work on digitizing the complete collection and to lease storage space. Johnson said they are now looking at alternatives to deal with the problem but without funding it will slow things down. “We have received some funding from the Alberta Museums Association to begin the process so we will seek other funding possibilities and continue to talk with council and the city,” said Johnson. “There may be that there is storage space somewhere in the city that we wouldn’t have to lease.” She said they will continue to digitize the collection but it is challenging because of the “bursting at the seams” conditions. Last year, the museum worked with the city on a feasibility study for a building built by the city to house the records management, the archives and provide some storage for the museum. Johnson said what came out of the study was a facility that would have been able to store about 30 per cent of the museum’s collection in addition to the city’s record management and archives. Johnson said it was ultimately decided this would not address the museum’s needs. The report has not come to council for consideration. “That makes our situation worse instead of better because then we would have had to operate out of two sites,” said Johnson. “That would have created staffing challenges right away. It wasn’t the right solution for us.” Councillors Frank Wong and Paul Harris unsuccessfully argued for council to float $50,000 to the museum to help with staffing to work on the digitalizing during the operating budget deliberations.
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Please see MUSEUM on Page A2
Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
MS Society of Canada regional director Lorraine Evans-Cross helps MS client Sandie Olsen negotiate the alley behind the MS office in downtown Red Deer.
CARS NOT ONLY THINGS FACING HAVOC ON ROADS DUE TO RECORD SNOWFALL BY MURRAY CRAWFORD ADVOCATE STAFF A record snowfall in Red Deer has caused havoc for drivers, residents and pedestrians, but its impact on those confined to a wheelchair has left many feeling trapped. Lorraine Evans-Cross, Central Alberta Multiple Sclerosis Society regional director, said every year at this time some of her clients who are in a wheelchair, or who have unstable mobility, begin to feel the walls of their home getting closer because of how hard it is to get around. “Any alteration of their path is going to impede their mobility,”
WEATHER A mix of sun and cloud. High -3, low -9.
FORECAST ON A2
said Evans-Cross. “Just any snow buildup on the sidewalks or on the curb-cuts on at the bus stops forces our clients to stay home because it just isn’t possible to get around in an average snowfall, let alone this craziness.” Heather Dahl has been in a wheelchair since she was 17. Now, at 42, she is still frustrated by how inaccessible the city can be to people in wheelchairs, especially at this time of year. Recently she was stuck in the entrance-way of the parking lot of her apartment in her van. Unable to move she called her landlord hoping for some help. “She told me I’d have to stay there until I got unstuck, unless I
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Capturing a revolution, and Oscar nod Apprehension was nothing new for Jehane Noujaim, director of The Square, nominated for an Academy Award.
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