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Alberta’s hospitals are facing a crisis that extends far beyond the walls of the emergency department. General internal medicine (GIM) divisions and emergency departments (EDs) are routinely operating well over capacity.

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In practical terms, this means patients are cared for in non-medical spaces, including hallways, ED waiting rooms, EMS offload spaces, surgical units and even labour and delivery units, because medicine beds are already full.

When inpatient volumes exceed capacity, patients requiring hospital care remain on ED stretchers, waiting for beds. Meanwhile, EMS must offload new arrivals into already crowded EDs. This creates a bottleneck: Emergency departments are squeezed from both ends, caring for new patients while managing already admitted inpatients who have nowhere else to go. Specialist and hospitalist colleagues are over capacity on wards, and patient safety is compromised.

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