With word coming this past week that the provincial government would pause a much-needed expansion of the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre in order to seek out some kind of private investment in the facility amounts to a failure of responsibility.
Not only should the government have invested in such an expansion long ago, they were also getting off cheap as it was in doing so.
A city of Airdrie’s size should have a fully staffed and funded health care centre or hospital, not just an urgent care centre. It is not normal that Airdrie does not have one.
Medicine Hat, a city of 60,000, has a large hospital. Brooks, a city of 15,000, has one. Taber, a town of 9,000, has one.
And yet Airdrie, with its 80,000 plus population, does not have one.
Successive provincial governments have taken advantage of Airdrie’s close proximity to Calgary to under-serve and over-extend Airdrie’s healthcare services. And yet, they cannot pony up even a much smaller amount of money to complete the expansion of the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre in a timely way with the best needs of the community at heart? Talk about a failure of responsibility.
Whatever excuses the province has for pausing these necessary renovations, none are good enough. They do not justify Airdrie’s continued under-service by AHS nor the fact that local patients are constantly being put at risk due to the limited healthcare services available here in Airdrie. Add to that the notably poor ambulance response time within the community these past few years, and enough is enough already.
As Airdronians, we continue to wait for the province to finally meet the healthcare needs of our community, and we are tired of all the delays and empty promises.
Just get on with it already.
