Parties joust over health
PCS, Wildrose pitch plans to cut wait times
Alberta’s $16-billion health-care system was the target of heated political campaigning Thursday, with all parties wading into the most contentious issue on the electoral landscape with new promises and fresh attacks.
After visiting the new south Calgary hospital, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith promised to pay for certain medical procedures at private facilities — if the public health system fails to meet mandated wait times.
Following her own visit of the same facility, Tory Leader Alison Redford pledged to fast-track emergency room care across Alberta.
The duelling announcements led to sharp exchanges between all four major parties, with the Wildrose accused of moving toward “Americanstyle” care and the Tories charged with failing Albertans on their most pressing issue.
“This is the albatross around any candidate, any future premier, any future government,” political analyst David Taras said of Alberta’s roiling healthcare concerns.
“It’s a monster that continues to devour the provincial budget and spending is just going to get greater and greater,” added the Mount Royal University professor.
The Wildrose leader unveiled the party’s Alberta Patient Wait Time Guarantee, noting it would be implemented for 10 common medical procedures, including knee and hip replacements, cataract surgery, MRI scans, radiation therapy and bypass operations.
Should hospitals keep patients waiting longer than times mandated under the Canadian Wait Time Alliance Benchmark, they could have their procedures done elsewhere and be reimbursed by Alberta Health Insurance, Smith said.
The caveat is that the maximum reimbursement would not exceed the cost of doing the procedure in Alberta.
“It guarantees all Albertans will get the health care they need, when they need it,” said Smith. “It means an end to Albertans languishing too long in health-care queues, in pain and in danger.”
Smith estimated the cost of the program to be about $180 million.
Her party would also implement a Protection of Public Health Care Guarantee, which would commit the province to boost the number of publicly insured health procedures performed in Alberta until the wait-time benchmarks are achieved.
The party hopes to reach the benchmarks, in part, by encouraging a mix of public and private operators, though the system must remain publicly funded, universally delivered and in accordance with the Canada Health Act, Smith said. That means private clinics would not be permitted any extra billing.
“The funding will follow the patient to that facility. So it rewards those who can find efficiencies because they will attract more patients, serve more customers, earn more revenue,” she added.
In Edmonton, NDP Leader Brian Mason said Smith’s wait-time guarantee “is the clearest indication we have had that she wants to move toward American-style health care.
“That’s not what Albertans want to see. It would allow people with money to jump the queue, to have superior access to health services,” Mason said. “She would create a twotier health-care system.”
For her part, Redford said the Wildrose party hasn’t actually proposed anything concrete to reduce wait times.
“We don’t think that simply deciding to pay for private health-care services either in this province or outside this province does anything to enhance the public health-care system,” Redford said later in Drumheller.
“Clearly they’re trying to encourage private care and we are fully committed to a publicly-funded health-care system that works.”
Redford pledged a re-elected PC government would introduce fast-track emergency rooms — which would move patients with easily identified conditions, such as a broken arm or a burn, through a speeded-up screening process to a dedicated space with dedicated staff.
“It’s not about more money, it’s about doing things differently,” Redford said. “What we’ve talked about this week is actual solutions.”
She pegged the cost of the initiative at about $2.5 million per unit for renovating existing facilities, and no additional costs for new hospitals.
Initial pilot projects will be based on St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, which has five adult beds and one children’s room. Most patients are in-and-out within two hours, according to a PC news release.
The move is intended to address lingering concerns about lengthy ER wait times across the province. In February, a report by the Health Quality Council of Alberta found unacceptably long wait times for emergency room care because of a shortage beds and long in-patient stays.
But the new idea didn’t impress Alberta’s doctors.
Dr. Felix Soibelman, section president of emergency medicine for the Alberta Medical Association, said versions of fast-track ERS have been operating in the province for decades.
“It’s not different than what’s happening in all major tertiary hospitals,” Soibelman said.
At the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, for instance, nurses are dedicated to a rapid assessment area off the emergency room.
Patients with broken bones or other less complicated health problems are treated there or put into different care spaces.
“Can they be more efficient? Absolutely, but it’s not a new concept,” Soibelman said.
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman, an emergency room physician, took a sarcastic swipe at Redford’s idea, calling it “fantastic.”
“Why didn’t we think of it earlier?” Sherman said in a statement. “We need to come up with a name for this. Why don’t we call it triage?”
Later in the day in Edmonton, Sherman said fast-tracking emergency rooms fails to deal with the seniors’ home-care needs that are contributing to an “ER crisis” in Alberta.
“It’s obvious the premier spent a bit too much time in the boardrooms and not the emergency rooms in the hospitals,” he said.
“We already have fast-tracks in all the major emergency departments, but for more than a decade they’ve been plugged up by admitted patients who should have been upstairs three days ago.”
Herb Emery, a health economist at the University of Calgary, wonders where all of the medical promises are headed as the election moves toward the halfway point this weekend.
“There’s going to be an interesting reckoning at some point with all these candidates trying to explain how all these promises and policies are going to work,” he said.