In a nicely worded opinion piece forwarded to the media, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne appears to want to put fears to rest regarding the closing of Edmonton City Centre Airport and the impact on medevac flights from northern Alberta to Edmonton.
“As with any change in the health care system, our primary objective is to ensure patient safety and access to rapid and high quality care. I want to assure Albertans that we have achieved this with a new state of the art medevac facility that opens in March,” Horne states.
“Some have suggested the province override the city's decision to close the airport. Our government respects the autonomy of our municipalities and their authority to make local decisions. Rather than interfere, we concentrated on finding the best solution,” the minister said.
It really begs the question, why not interfere? Why does the City of Edmonton, which loudly likes to proclaim itself as the Gateway to the North, seem to be so hard to get along with? Mayor Stephen Mandel and his fellow council have no worries going to the province with their hand out for funding for a new arena, which we're quite sure will see more than a few northerners patronize when it's built. Seems like some kind of a deal could have been made here.
The jury is still very much out as to whether or not rerouting fixed-wing medevac flights to the International Airport is in the best interest of northern Albertans caught in an emergency situation. STARS helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft provide an essential service in transporting time-sensitive emergency patients to triage centres in Edmonton. While STARS lands at the hospitals, fixed-wing aircraft land at the City Centre Airport. But come March, it will be the International Airport.
Horne suggests the International Airport is the “safest and most reliable option for patients being flown to Edmonton.” While that may in fact be true, many people we've spoken to are legitimately concerned this option adds time to emergency transfers, time that some critical patients just don't have.
While Minister Horne would have us believe that this changeover to the International Airport “is good news for Alberta,” we're not convinced that it actually is and, based on our conversations this past week, we're not alone.
