Despite community concerns and fund raising, AHS plans to close ER in Beaverlodge

United Nurses of Alberta is deeply concerned about plans to permanently close the Emergency Department in the northwest Alberta community of Beaverlodge. 

Plans to construct a new building to replace the aging Beaverlodge Municipal Hospital will not include the construction of a new 24-hour Emergency Room. 

Instead, the new Mountview Health Complex will include what Alberta Health Services terms an “Advanced Ambulatory Care Centre" that will only be open for 16 hours per day and will close overnight.

“Closing the ER in Beaverlodge will not only impact the nurses who currently work in the hospital but also patients who will need to drive 45 kilometres to Grande Prairie to access emergency services,” said UNA President Heather Smith. “This will leave a huge gap in emergency services in this sprawling region of northwest Alberta.

Residents of the community will soon need to drive to the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital to access 24-hour emergency department services. Residents living west of Beaverlodge in communities like Hythe will have even further to drive.

Concerns about the ER closure were raised by Dr. Camellia Presley, a Beaverlodge physician, in front of 350 local residents at a noisy standing-room-only town hall meeting in the community in late June.

“Physicians will not work in an AACC,” she told the meeting, the Grande Prairie based Town & Country News reported. “Zero doctors have agreed to this.” She said the three local physicians who work at the hospital’s ER will leave. “That leaves me. I’m not going to work 16 hours. It’s not going to happen.”

UNA is also concerned privatization of the construction of the new building will set a dangerous precedent for replacing aging hospitals in other rural communities across Alberta.

Residents of Beaverlodge have long advocated for a replacement to the hospital, first opened in 1956 and the second-oldest operating hospital in Alberta. Efforts by municipal leaders and community members to raise funds to build a replacement hospital led to the formation of Mountview Health Limited Partnership in 2021. The Public-Private Partnership is an arrangement between the Town of Beaverlodge and Landrex Inc., a residential and commercial construction company based in St. Albert.

“It shouldn’t be up to individual Albertans to raise funds above and beyond the taxes they pay for public services that are the provincial government’s responsibility to provide,” Smith said. “I can hardly fault the people of Beaverlodge for stepping up when the provincial government wouldn’t, but the community expected their donations would help build a new hospital.”

The new building replacing the Beaverlodge Municipal Hospital will not be a hospital but is described as an “integrated campus of care” on the Mountview Health Limited Partnership website.

The Alberta government says AHS will lease space in the new complex, but the dissolution of the province-wide single health-care agency raises serious questions about what other services will be downgraded at the new location.

“This is a warning signal for all small towns with aging hospitals,” Smith said. “You had better call your local MLA, because if you have to start passing the hat to replace your local hospital you might end up with less health care service than what you had."

According to the partnership group’s website, the Town of Beaverlodge requested in March 2024 that the Department of Health add a trauma room to the complex at the expense of the partnership group. That request was denied by Alberta Health in June 2024 because “it was determined that the associated costs would not be financially feasible.”