Over 2.5 years, AHS closed ERs in 35 communities

Back in May 2021, I wrote a story about Alberta Health Services closing the emergency department at hospitals in northern Alberta: Fairview, Rocky Mountain House, and Elk Point.

These were the first emergency department closures in Alberta in 2021.

Since that article, AHS has closed emergency departments in multiple communities throughout the province. And nearly every month during that time, I’ve been writing a summary of those closures.

Given that two and a half years have passed from the time I wrote the first article, I was curious what the closures have been like during that time, rather than just month to month. I don’t think the monthly summaries really capture the state of emergency departments in Alberta.

So, I combed through all the articles I’ve written between May 2021 and November 2023 and compiled the number of days emergency departments were closed each month and in which communities.

To clarify, if a community had 1 day of closure, it just means that the closure happened on one day, not that it spanned 24 hours.

In my news stories, I try to include the length of hours for each closure, but sometimes, AHS doesn’t include start times, so it isn’t always possible.

As a result, the “days” represented in the data could be 8 hours or 24 hours. If a closure extended past 24 hours, I counted it as 2 days. If it started on one day and ended the following day, I counted it as 1 day, if the duration was less than 24 hours.

I stored the data in a Google Sheet document, which I’ve made public.

In total, over the last 2.5 years, AHS has closed the emergency departments in 35 communities. These communities experienced a combined 3,031 closure days, or an average of 86.6 closure days per community.

Here’s how those closures looked like by month.

We can see that closure days really ballooned in the last half of 2022 and the early part of 2023, although they seem to have been on a decline over the last year. That being said, there is a slight uptick over the last two months, so we’ll have to see if that’s an anomaly (as July and August appeared to be) or the beginning of a new upward trend.

Even with a year-long decline, closure days are still much higher than they were in 2021. Between May and November 2021, the province averages 19.7 closure days per month. Two years later—May to November 2023—the monthly average had increased to 110.1 closure days, a 459% increase.

Let’s take a look at the number of communities affected by closures each month now.

This time, we don’t see that 2022 bulge as we did in the previous chart. If anything, we’ve seen a more sustained increase during the last half of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

The data started with only 3 affected communities, but we see only 2 other months with numbers that low, and there’s never been a month since 2021 with fewer than 6 communities affected by a closure.

Between January and November 2022, the number of communities affected by emergency department closures averaged 9.9 a month. That increased to an average of 10.6 a month during the same period in 2023.

The increase is even more pronounced if we look at just the 6 months between June and November (both months inclusive) of both years. In 2022, AHS shut down the emergency department in an average of 11 communities a month during that 6-month period. Over the same time in 2023, that average was 12 communities per month.

Here’s the average number of closure days per community each month.

Unsurprisingly, we see that same peak in 2022, with a similar decline in 2023. Given that the number of closure days per month has decreased, it shouldn’t shock anyone that the average closure days per community also decreased, despite the number of communities affected each month has increased.

And again, even though we’ve seen quit a drop over the last few months, we’re still higher than we were at the start of the dataset, in early and mid 2021.

Now, let’s explore the actual 35 communities that have experienced at least one closure over the last 2.5 years.

	Total closure days
Grimshaw	460
Consort	434
Daysland	413
Boyle	303
Tofield	277
Bassano	178
Swan Hills	176
Elk Point	132
Wabasca-Desmarais	98
Milk River	93
Two Hills	85
Cold Lake	55
Lac La Biche	55
Coronation	49
Beaverlodge	29
Barrhead	28
Ponoka	27
Smoky Lake	24
Fairview	22
McLennan	21
Fort Vermilion	16
Rocky Mountain House	13
Spirit River	13
Stettler	5
Fort Macleod	4
Hardisty	4
Pincher Creek	3
Lacombe	2
Athabasca	2
Drayton Valley	2
Manning	2
Vermillion	2
Valleyview	2
Red Deer	1
Viking	1

Only 12 communities (about a third) saw closure days in the single digits. And 9 saw close to or over 100 closure days, of which, 3 were above 400.

Grimshaw topped the list at 460 closure days. That’s more than an entire year where this town of about 3,000 people lost their emergency department for at least an hour each day.

The communities of Consort and Daysland also totalled more than a year’s worth of closure days since May 2021.

The list changes when we look at the number of months when each community experienced at least one closure day.

	Months with closure days
Consort	23
Grimshaw	17
Daysland	16
Milk River	16
Boyle	14
Elk Point	14
Swan Hills	13
Beaverlodge	13
Cold Lake	12
Wabasca-Desmarais	11
Lac La Biche	11
Ponoka	11
Tofield	10
Bassano	9
Fairview	9
McLennan	9
Barrhead	8
Spirit River	8
Two Hills	7
Coronation	7
Smoky Lake	6
Rocky Mountain House	6
Stettler	5
Fort Macleod	3
Fort Vermilion	2
Pincher Creek	2
Lacombe	2
Drayton Valley	2
Vermillion	2
Hardisty	1
Athabasca	1
Manning	1
Valleyview	1
Red Deer	1
Viking	1

Consort now tops the list at 23 months with at least one closure day. That’s almost 2 years where they saw at least one closure in a month.

Grimshaw drops slightly from first place to second place.

There were 6 communities that experienced only 1 month with at least a closure. Most of the communities (26) had less than a year’s worth of months with at least one closure day.

Finally, here’s a list of communities with their average closures per month.

Tofield	27.70
Grimshaw	27.06
Daysland	25.81
Boyle	21.64
Bassano	19.78
Consort	18.87
Swan Hills	13.54
Two Hills	12.14
Elk Point	9.43
Wabasca-Desmarais	8.91
Fort Vermilion	8.00
Coronation	7.00
Milk River	5.81
Lac La Biche	5.00
Cold Lake	4.58
Smoky Lake	4.00
Hardisty	4.00
Barrhead	3.50
Ponoka	2.45
Fairview	2.44
McLennan	2.33
Beaverlodge	2.23
Rocky Mountain House	2.17
Athabasca	2.00
Manning	2.00
Valleyview	2.00
Spirit River	1.63
Pincher Creek	1.50
Fort Macleod	1.33
Stettler	1.00
Lacombe	1.00
Drayton Valley	1.00
Vermillion	1.00
Red Deer	1.00
Viking	1.00

Four communities experienced an average of more than 20 closures per month, for each of the months where they actually experienced a closure, with Tofield jumping to first place at 27.7 closure days.

Nine communities saw fewer than 2 closure days per month, on average.