One doctor in Alberta helped create a program meant to try and address emergency room overcrowding.
The Edmonton program, called Bridge Healing, looks to address homelessness among those making repeat hospital visits, said Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta who works as an emergency physician.
If someone comes to the emergency department with no fixed address, Francescutti said they’re asked two questions: whether they are homeless, and whether they want a chance to get their life together again.
“If they say yes and there’s beds available, we send them by cab to these purpose-built buildings, where we provide them free-of-charge accommodation,” he said, along with services including access to a medical clinic to start to address their needs.
“Emergency department staff are becoming morally distressed,” he said. “They’re burning out because they see a problem that is solvable if we had the right people intervening.”
He said that includes better access to specialized clinics and practitioners like social workers.
However, some practitioners say there is another missing element: safe consumption sites, many of which were closed down in provinces like Ontario, with the provincial government saying the sites encouraged drug use.
At these sites, workers would be able to assess comatose overdose patients, potentially giving them oxygen or a small dose of naloxone so they can avoid being put into full opioid withdrawal, said Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency physician at three downtown Toronto hospitals.
“This really matters because if you want safe subways, if you want safe parks, if you want a better-functioning ER, there is a place for people who need to use drugs,” he said.
Indeed, without the supervised sites, people who previously would have been revived at the sites now need to go to emergency, a 2026 report by Gillian Kolla of Memorial University’s medicine faculty and epidemiologist Tara Gomes of the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network suggests, delaying care for other life-threatening conditions such as heart attacks and traumatic injuries from vehicle collisions.
Not a bad time to remind everyone: the UCP aren’t trying to address Addictions. They’re creating the churn that keeps people down. That $150 million for addictions recovery? That’s at the expense of the public health system response - formerly AHS. They’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul. In this case, the UCP are alleged to rob the healthcare system to fund their own tier of healthcare which may or may not be the subject of criminal charges for money laundering, breach of trust, and fraud.
As Albertans will recall, the UCP was lining up an entire forced recovery model through the Compassionate Care Act, provided through Recovery Centres built with the alleged involvement of Sam Mraiche and the Corrupt Care system of contracts. Those Recovery Centres? Three, each about $50 million a piece. All tied up in litigation. What we actually need? Addictions Treatment: social workers, safe consumption sites, addictions counseling, and rehabilitation.
We’ve literally got doctors at ER drawing the connection between safe streets, functioning ERs, and proper Addictions Response.
What do Canadians actually get? Street purges dubbed Operation Order for the fifth time. We may as well just start lumping them all together from across the province and throughout time. For all we know this is the 3000th purge. We all know the police aren’t meant to be social workers, but they’re asked to be everything.
Then you’ve got the police in Edmonton and Calgary playing politics. They want budgets that take from everything too.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-police-sweep-downtown-fifth-operation-order