The Barrhead Healthcare Centre is suffering from an identity crisis. Not from the facility itself or its staff, but from the community.
Even though the Healthcare Centre provides a vital service to the residents of the Barrhead area, not many know of all the services it has to offer.
That is why Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the staff of the Barrhead Healthcare Centre decided to have an open house on Wednesday, April 7.
Lois Burletoff, Barrhead Healthcare Centre Site Manager, said the facility isn’t the same hospital that your grandparents or parents are familiar with.
“I don’t think a lot of people realize how many services our hospital actually provides. For example, we have a very busy surgical department,” she said, adding the majority of the surgeries people have can be done at the Healthcare Centre.
That is why the staff decided to show people what the typical surgery process is like at the hospital.
Burletoff said a person’s surgery journey usually begins with a visit to their family doctor. After determining that surgery is needed a person’s family doctor will then schedule a consultation for the patient with a surgeon.
After consultation the surgeon will schedule a surgery date and depending on the surgeon and the type of procedure and the wait times, it could be anywhere from a matter of a few weeks to close to a year.
After a patient is given a surgery date, usually at the same time two other appointments are scheduled, one to a pre-admission clinic, the other with an anesthesiologist.
In the preadmission clinic, a registered nurse will get a detailed medical history from a patient, asking a variety of questions such as what type of medication a person is taking, and what type of surgeries a person may have had in the past. The nurse will then take the patient’s vital signs and schedule any other tests which may be needed before surgery.
During the anesthesiologist consultation the doctor will help determine if a patient is healthy enough for surgery and discuss the best anesthetic to use for the procedure.
“You can have almost everything done right here in Barrhead from all the blood work, X-rays and ultra sounds,” Burletoff said, adding that after the surgical procedure is done the hospital also has an extensive list of home care services.
Dr. Brent Wray, Barrhead Health Care Centre Medical Director, agrees with Burletoff saying the hospital has a long history of hosting surgical services.
Wray said when he first came to Barrhead in 1970 the Healthcare Centre did a number of different types of surgeries, but over time the surgical services the hospital provided started to go down, mostly because of the lack of doctors.
However, in the last number of years both Wray and Burletoff said the surgical services the Healthcare Centre provides has been steadily increasing.
Currently the facility has nine doctors who provide a wide variety of surgeries from general surgery and endoscopy, orthopedics, gynecology obstetrics and cesareans. Recently the Healthcare Centre has added an ears, nose and throat specialist who comes to Barrhead twice a month to perform such surgeries as tonsillectomies.
“For our zone, which includes such communities as Whitecourt, Swan Hills, Westlock, Barrhead all the way to Morinville, Barrhead is the hospital of expertise for surgeries such as gynecology and obstetrics and colonoscopies,” Wray said, adding that Barrhead does a number of types of surgeries that usually only the hospitals in the large cities do.
When Wray was asked if the staff was concerned about the AHS recently announced cutbacks he said yes.
“The budget always worries us, but AHS has always been good to us, I think in part because I have been here such a long time and they know I will spend our money wisely,” he said, adding he can’t let fear of cutbacks stop him from doing what is best for the hospital.
As for the future of the surgery, the Healthcare Centre is trying to expand their surgery capabilities. Just recently, he noted the Healthcare Centre spent about $60,000 upgrading one of the facility’s two operating rooms. The facility also has an outpatient procedure room where doctors perform a number of day surgeries.
“What I and the rest of the staff want people to know is that the Healthcare Centre in Barrhead does a lot of surgeries, and if their doctor says they need surgery, they should ask to have it done right here in Barrhead,” Wray added.
