Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping has been tasked with ensuring the government takes quick action to bring substantive improvements to emergency room services, clear surgical backlogs in the province and create health spending accounts.
Premier Danielle Smith outlined her wishes for the ministry in a mandate letter sent to the health minister earlier this week.
“Albertans are counting on us and they rightfully expect their government to address the challenges they are facing with our full attention and action,” Smith wrote.
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Other mandates outlined in her letter include working with the minister of technology and innovation to establish health spending accounts, ensuring all areas of Alberta receive prompt and efficient ambulance service and addressing health-care staffing challenges, particularly in rural areas. (See full list of expectations below).
During her UCP leadership campaign, Smith said her government would provide every Albertan with a $300 health spending account to use for health expenses not covered by Alberta Health insurance.
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Copping is to work on these things while keeping inflation and affordability in mind, Smith said.
“The challenges facing our health-care system mean Albertans aren’t getting the necessary care they need when and where they need it,” Smith wrote.
“While we may face challenges, I nonetheless have full confidence that our government can and will address these matters to secure a province that remains a healthy haven for those seeking economic opportunity and freedom.”
Opposition health critic David Shepherd maintains Smith’s plans for health care in Alberta will “create more chaos and hardship for all Albertans.”
“Across the province, parents and emergency room staff are crying out for support but the leader of the UCP is silent,” Shepherd said in a statement Wednesday. “Frontline health-care staff are exhausted and demoralized after years of this government’s incompetence and attacks, and all the premier has to offer is more disruption and disrespect.
“Danielle Smith, the health minister and the new interim CMOH need to get up in front of Albertans today and tell us what they are going to do to support families through this immediate crisis in children’s health care.
“It’s clear, when it comes to health care, Albertans simply can’t trust the UCP. They don’t need more chaos — they need more care.”
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Smith said she expects Copping to deliver on the following commitments for Albertans:
- Develop a series of reforms to the health-care system that restore decision-making authority to the local level, incentivize regional innovation and competition to provide increased medical services and surgeries, and that attracts health-care professionals domestically and internationally
- Assess the effectiveness of our health-care institutions including the HQCA (Health Quality Council of Alberta) and AHS and develop a plan to improve health-care delivery and health-care outcomes while managing costs. This includes mechanisms to support local decision making within AHS and supporting our frontline health-care workers
- Take immediate tangible steps to have AHS improve EMS response times, decrease surgical backlogs and cut emergency room wait times
- Address health-care staffing challenges, particularly in rural areas, through improving health workforce planning, evaluating retention policies, leveraging the scope of allied health professionals, streamlining immigration and certification processes, and further increasing the number of training seats for health-care professionals in Alberta. This includes fulling implementing the recently negotiated AMA (Alberta Medical Association) agreement
- Support primary care as the foundation of our health-care system through assessing alternative models of care and leveraging all health-care professionals. This includes continuing the work of modernizing Alberta’s primary care system initiative, assessing alternative compensation models for family physicians and nurse practitioners, improving the management of chronic disease and increasing the number of Albertans attached to a medical home
- Improve provision of care to seniors through implementing recommendations coming out of the facility-based continuing care review and the advancing palliative and end-of-life care in Alberta report. This includes continuing to add continuing care congregate spaces as well as supporting seniors to stay in their homes longer with additional supports and focus on providing appropriate home care
- Work with municipalities, doctors and allied health providers to identify strategies to attract and retain health-care workers to rural Alberta
- With the minister of Technology and Innovation as lead, work to establish health spending accounts, assess the inter-functionality of the 1,300 or more IT systems currently in use in health (as identified in the 2017 auditor general report), as well as pilot existing software apps that can be used to streamline ER waiting times and more effectively manage shift schedules
- Establish a task force of medical professionals under the Alberta Health Quality Council to conduct a data review of the last several years of health information with a view to offering recommendations on how to better manage a future pandemic
- Work with parliamentary secretary for EMS Reform RJ Sigurdson to address EMS challenges
- Work with the parliamentary secretary for Rural Health Tany Yao to address rural health challenges such as access and health-care professionals
