UCP looks to rural sites to reduce surgery waits
Province also unveils spending on capital projects for next three years
EDMONTON The province is promising to reduce surgical wait times with a $500-million strategy to shift some services to rural health facilities and independent clinics.
The move, announced in Thursday’s provincial budget, will see the government spend roughly $400 million over three years to cover surgical operational costs for rural facilities and private clinics to perform less complex procedures such as cataract surgeries. How that money will be divided up is still being determined.
The number of operations in the province is expected to rise from 40,300 in 2018-19 to 47,800 in 2019-20. Independent providers currently perform 15 per cent of Alberta’s surgeries. The province hopes to increase that to 30 per cent by 2022-23.
The other $100 million in funding will go toward capital projects for Alberta Health Services (Ahs)run facilities.
Finance Minister Travis Toews said having more independent clinics is cost effective and similar to what Saskatchewan has done.
“(Saskatchewan) drastically reduced their wait times and they actually performed those surgeries up to 26 per cent less cost than the general system,” he said. “Our goal is to reduce the surgical backlog by about 80,000 surgeries over the next three years.”
Health Minister Tyler Shandro was unavailable to comment following the release of the budget.
NDP health critic David Shepherd accused the government of taking $135 million from hospitals and $117 million from acute care and moving that money around to fund initiatives.
“It is a shell game,” he said. “They are shuffling money around. They are taking money out of primary care, taking money out of community care, taking money out of seniors’ drug benefits, they ’re taking money out of acute care in hospitals and they’re going to shuffle it over to these private facilities.”
Friends of Medicare executive director Sandra Azocar praised the government for putting more money towards rural surgeries but cautioned against privatization of Alberta’s public system.
“What this government has failed to do is to provide Albertans with a cost comparator,” she said. “They have failed to provide a cost analysis. That’s huge for a government that’s fiscally responsible.”
The province will spend another $35 million over three years to further improve rural facilities, though it did not specify what those improvements would be.
Health spending remains relatively unchanged at $20.6 billion, a small increase of $5 million. That includes $40 million for the opioid
response strategy, $100 million for mental health and addictions strategy and $20 million for palliative care — all figures announced in the fall budget. AHS will receive $15.4 billion per year.
The province is freezing doctor pay at $5.4 billion per year, which includes grants to post-secondary schools for academic medicine. The wage freeze follows months of tense negotiations with the Alberta Medical Association. After the two parties were unable to come to an agreement, the province announced a new framework this month, which the UCP says will save roughly $2 billion.
A review of AHS, also released earlier this month, contained a number of recommendations to save money. Government officials say full implementation is expected to be rolled out in May.
The budget for Alberta’s seven existing supervised consumption sites and one temporary site stays at $19 million. However, that figure could change after a report on the sites is released this spring.
Income testing for drug coverage for higher-income seniors, mentioned in the fall budget, will be introduced with details yet to come.