Alberta Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange speaks to the media in Calgary on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. She says says the Alberta government is fundamentally restructuring health care because the system "is not working." (Photo: Canadian Press)

By The Canadian Press

Provincial Politics

Alberta health minister says fundamental change needed as system is ‘not working’

Nov 7, 2023 | 9:35 AM

CALGARY, AB – Health Minister Adriana LaGrange says the Alberta government is fundamentally restructuring health care because the system “is not working.”

“Any Albertan who has gone to a hospital or to a clinic and had to endure the long wait times and not had access and not have quality care knows that we need to do something differently,” LaGrange told the house during question period Monday.

“The average Albertan cannot get in to see a family physician when they need to.

“What’s happening right now is not working, so we are committed to improving the system.”

Premier Danielle Smith’s government has promised to introduce in the current fall sitting a plan to decentralize Alberta Health Services that will deliver more decision-making and accountability to regions.

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LaGrange told the house she has met with stakeholders and other Albertans and is acting on their concerns.

“I’m excited about what we are bringing forward that will actually refocus the system (and) empower the workforce,” said LaGrange.

“They’re wanting change. We’re going to give it to them.”

Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Smith’s government has proven it is not up to the challenge given it had to recently reverse a program to outsource more community lab testing to Dynalife, a decision that resulted in an explosion of long waits for testing in Calgary and southern Alberta.

“This UCP government has to be kept as far away as possible from our health-care system,” Notley told LaGrange.

“After this lab fiasco, this government must know they have zero credibility with Albertans.”

Community lab-testing is now being restored to the government by the end of the year, and LaGrange said wait times are improving.

Notley noted the auditor general has agreed to investigate the Dynalife deal, and urged LaGrange to wait.

“Why won’t the minister agree to wait and see how much this mess costs Albertans before she goes off to try and create a new one?” said Notley.

Smith has long promised fundamental reform of Alberta Health Services, better known as AHS, which is tasked with carrying out health policy and delivering front-line care.

Smith has criticized AHS as too top-down and monolithic in its decision-making and said it failed to respond to rising hospitalization rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, she fired the board of AHS and replaced it with a single administrator.

On Saturday, Smith told reporters in Calgary that the looming changes will see AHS focus on hospital and acute care with other priorities such as primary care and mental health hived off in a process expected to take 18 months to two years.

Smith called the process “disaggregating.”

“Alberta Health Services is going to continue operating our acute-care facilities, and we’re going to ask them to do a better and better job at it,” said Smith.

“We’re going to ask them to make sure they’re optimizing the use of each facility, that they’ve got the right patients in the right place receiving the right treatment and that local decision-making is optimized, regional co-ordination is optimized and the central functions that make sense happen at the central level.

“Too many of those decisions happened at the provincewide level and it ended up creating a lot of frustration.”

Last week, the president of the Alberta Medical Association said physicians are watching carefully what the province will be proposing.

Dr. Paul Parks, also an emergency room doctor, said doctors need to be involved at every stage as even small policy changes can have profound effects in an integrated system like health care.

“Using Alberta Health Services as a scapegoat for the government’s political failings has long served as a convenient means of deflection, and it’s safe to say we are seeing that again today,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “This alarming proposal to create chaos by restructuring Alberta Health Services, while opening up even more of our health care to privatization, isn’t what Albertans need to hear right now. We need action and real solutions to finally address the overlapping crises in our public health care.”

“The short staffing crisis across our frontline health care system is leaving Albertans increasingly concerned about access to care. Yet rather than address the real issues, the UCP government wants to drastically restructure administration as a supposed solution,” said Gallaway. “At a moment when so many health care workers are openly contemplating leaving the system, or the province, this is the worst possible time for the government to be creating even more instability and uncertainty. They should be acting quickly to show they respect our health care workers, and prioritizing a plan to retain those already working so hard to keep Alberta’s health care system afloat, while recruiting and training those we need going forward.”

“People in this province deserve to know that our public health care is being protected and strengthened, not dismantled and thrown into disarray to fulfill the political whims of the government or Premier of the day,” concluded Gallaway.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2023. (With files from rdnewsNOW)

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