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Watch: A stunning, fully-furnished dream home could be yours – please support the Red Deer Hospital Lottery

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Red Deer Hospital Lottery 2019 Cause:  Pyxis Medstations

Pyxis Medstations are automated medication dispensing units with numerous electronic features to ensure safety, accuracy and efficiency.

In our hospital, over 1,000 new medication orders are written by prescribers and processed every day. 13,000 units of medication are dispensed on the care areas every 24 hours. The process for dispensing this medication is paper-based and manual with nurses selecting medication from a patient drawer or from the unit supply.

Patient safety is of utmost concern in our hospital, and the Pyxis system will help ensure the best possible healthcare for Central Albertans. Automated medication dispensing will ensure possible allergies, drug interactions, and duplicates in therapy are reviewed before medication is given, reduce the chances of a patient receiving the wrong medication, only allow access to medications approved for that patient, warn if a medication is selected too early or too late for a patient, provide additional instruction and information on medications to healthcare providers, enhance communication between the pharmacy and nursing.

The technology will further ensure medication dispensing safety with ‘bedside medication verification’. Once a medication has been selected for a patient, the nurse will scan the patient file at the bedside before administering the medication to that patient.2019 proceeds will be used to purchase Pyxis Medstations for use in emergency, the intensive care unit, operating room, recovery room, unit 22 (cardiology), & other critical care areas at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.

Red Deer Hospital Lottery  Proceeds from the Lottery have exceeded $8.5 million since its inception; the lottery has become a huge success and has plenty to celebrate!

For a fifth exciting year we are proud to partner with Sorento Custom Homes for the 2019 Red Deer Hospital Lottery Dream Home!

The 2019 Red Deer Hospital Lottery Dream Home, designed by Sorento Custom Homes, makes a strong statement of luxury and design. This $840,000 bungalow features 3,110 sq ft of developed living space. It’s a perfect family home with 3 bedrooms, 2 1⁄2 baths, and a master chef kitchen with adjoining butler pantry. You’ll love the high vaulted ceilings in the main living space, accented with wood beams & two large skylights, plus a full height brick fireplace. Enjoy the convenience of the 5 piece ensuite, connecting to a large walk-in closet and adjoining laundry room. Finish off this beautiful unique home with an impressive wet bar, and $40,000 worth of gorgeous furnishing provided by The Brick. Our Dream Home is located in the community of Laredo on the south east corner of Red Deer.

There are 100 prizes to be won valued at more than $1.1 million. This year’s Early Bird prize is: $25,000 Cash!

Don’t forget the MegaBucks 50 Raffle with a minimum cash payout of $100,000. Last year’s winner took home $250,000!
2019 proceeds will be used to purchase Pyxis Medstations, automated medication dispensing units with numerous electronic features to ensure safety for patients at the Red Deer hospital, and accuracy and efficiency for hospital staff.

Tickets for the Lottery are $25 each, 5 for $100 or 15 for $250 Call 403.340.1878 or toll-free at 1.877.808.9005.

Mega Bucks 50 tickets are $10 each, 10 for $25, and 25 for $50. To order online or for more details visit reddeerhospitallottery.ca

The show home is open to the public beginning March 15 at 1pm. Show home hours are March 15 – March 31, Daily 1-5 p.m.; Starting April 1, Friday – Sunday 1-5 p.m. Closed Good Friday, open Easter Sunday.

Early Bird cutoff is 11pm May 27, 2019. Final Ticket Sales cutoff is 11 pm June 24, 2019.

 

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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