Bitter pill
AHS priorities would make many Albertans queasy
The revelation that a former Alberta Health Services vicepresident has been sent back to Britain with $426,576 of taxpayers’ money in her luggage, at the same time the superboard is scrambling to cut the cost of home care, is disappointing.
Bad optics are one thing. In this case, we’re not talking about spin or how the tale is told — we’re looking at scarce public money intended to provide health care to Albertans being diverted to meet the lavish contract provisions of a no-longerneeded bureaucrat.
To be fair, Alison Tonge, who was employed by Albertans from 2009 to January of this year — didn’t carry off her loot all at once. The U.K.recruited health-care executive received it in 12 monthly payments of $35,548, according to documents released by the Liberal party this week.
“Where is the accountability from the government? These are governmental arms,” said Liberal Leader Raj Sherman.
“Is this standard practice in agencies, boards and commissions to give these exorbitant sums? It’s no wonder this government is nickel-and-diming working families ... and cutting back on home care for our seniors and giving them only one bath a week.”
Why, yes, it is standard practice in the bloated AHS bureaucracy to pay a full year’s salary in severance to executives, a spokesman confirms — an admission that should irritate every Albertan who pays taxes or has ever had to wait for medical service.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for the health superboard, said Tonge’s position was eliminated when the number of senior executives was cut from 84 to 81. Given all that was at stake — eye-popping severance packages and other costly obligations — one would have hoped AHS would have been more careful in taking on Tonge and her colleagues in the first place.
It still seems questionable that AHS would equip itself with 81 senior executives at the same time it’s trimming home-care services for some of its more than 100,000 clients.
It’s long been acknowledged that keeping seniors in their homes is key to easing demand in higher-cost nursing homes, emergency rooms and acute care beds. Home care also pays dividends to the clients themselves, shielding them from medical environments where infections are more likely to occur and allowing them to continue to enjoy some normalcy in their lives amid familiar surroundings.
AHS says growth in homecare costs has exceeded the $488-million yearly budget, so cuts will be made on a socalled case-by-case basis. In Edmonton, according to an AHS document leaked by the New Democrats, 25 per cent of clients have had the duration of their visits by home-care aides or nurses trimmed in a bid to save $1.6 million by the end of March.
Given the embarrassment of funnelling buckets of cash to jettisoned executives, while at the same time, rationing home care to vulnerable seniors, it’s likely AHS not only has too many high-priced mandarins, but the wrong sort of them.