AHS in forefront of health-care achievements
Re: “Forget doctors, Redford should target AHS execs,” Licia Corbella, Opinion, Feb. 9.
While I agree with Licia Corbella — Alberta Health Services does need to be more efficient and less bureaucratic, and question every dollar spent and every decision made, based on how it improves access and patient satisfaction — what matters most to me is what we are doing now, not what might have happened in the past.
At the time of amalgamation of the nine former health regions, AHS had 144 vice-presidents and senior executives. Too many people without enough to do! Since then, that number has been reduced to 81. These executive reductions, together with other administrative changes, have resulted in $660 million in administration cost savings and cost avoidance being removed from the health system. However, more needs to be done and will be done. Why does AHS still need that many VPs? Because it has almost 100,000 employees, 16,800 volunteers and more than 8,000 physicians in 99 hospitals, five stand-alone psychiatric facilities, with 8,118 acute care beds and 21,683 continuing care beds and spaces. AHS runs a $12.6-billion budget, and by any measure, is one of the largest and most complex organizations, public or private, in Canada today.
In fact, AHS now has the leanest health-care admin- istration in Canada, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The cost of administration within Alberta, as a percentage of total expenses, was 3.3 per cent in 2010/11. Again, this is the lowest in Canada.
Is that good enough? No. And neither is our improvement rate for patient satisfaction. It’s better than in 2010, when the last survey was done by the Health Quality Council of Alberta, but most of us would agree, and that includes the VPs, managers and leaders at AHS who put in long hours, days and nights keeping a complex health system on track and moving forward, there’s much more to be done.
It’s why, more than a year ago, we began shifting more decision-making into the hands of local leaders in Alberta’s five zones and why we accelerated that work last fall. We are actively moving to have local decisions made as close to their impact point as possible. It’s why all our leaders today have responsibility to answer tough questions when it comes to spending: How does this improve care? How does this improve access? How does it add value? And it’s why the AHS board has challenged AHS’s leaders to find more efficiencies, more ways to reduce administrative costs and to make AHS more productive. Our leaders understand that and they have our confidence.
All of this work is urgent and necessary if we want to have a sustainable healthcare delivery system. AHS has accepted responsibility for doing its part to tackle Alberta’s budget realities. We are in a dramatically different economic environment today compared to a year ago, let alone four years, which now seems like the distant past.
As our CEO, Dr. Chris Eagle, has said, “We need greater emphasis on people, less emphasis on bureaucratic processes. We must view our health-care delivery system and everything we do through the eyes of our patients.”
While I can’t speak to anecdotes about what might have happened before AHS was created, I am confident that the AHS of today will rise to the challenges ahead. All of our leaders have taken on the work of the former executives and managers and more, as AHS has adopted higher performance targets and performance expectations. We will need them to do more still.
In fact, I’d go further. All of our staff and physicians and volunteers should be commended for achieving what no other province has done: Building a provincial health system with strong local accountability and the ability to make meaningful, transformational, long-term change to improve access and the patient experience.
While I respect Corbella’s opinion, I respectfully disagree with her. AHS administrators are dedicated and hard-working individuals who do their best day in and day out to improve health care in Alberta.
If people have concerns or questions about AHS, I want to hear from them, because as the chair of AHS, the buck stops here! Our board and me, as its chair, have overarching responsibility for such matters and we welcome any concrete, constructive and well-reasoned thoughts.
Above all, it’s time to look forward, not back.