Health stats veer off course

Alberta Health Services’ decision to overhaul its publicly reported performance measures is akin to changing the Olympic bobsleigh course midway through the heats and expecting judges to stick to three medallists, ignoring the fact one route is longer and the other built with more turns.

To do such a thing mid-race would be outrageously unfair to athletes and extremely confusing for spectators. Yet that is the position Albertans are now in when it comes to important health care statistics.

In late January, AHS, which handles the day-today operations of Alberta’s health care system, announced it was replacing its quarterly health care report card of more than 50 statistics with a revamped report boiled down to 16 measures.

The old report card is no longer being produced. After four years of evaluating the health care system’s performance based on one set of conditions, health care officials have rewritten the scorecard in a way that makes it difficult to compare how health care is performing today compared to 2009/2010.

Provincial officials, including Health Minister Fred Horne said the new indicators are easier to understand and a better reflection of performance. If politicians and policy experts really believe that, there is no reason they should not offer a new bundle of measurements. It may be true that the previous quarterly report card failed to accurately reflect positive progress in the health care system.

But that means the new bundle of statistics should be offered in addition to — not instead of — the performance measures that Albertans are used to seeing and interpreting. AHS says it will continue to track some old measures for internal purposes and to share with other organizations anyhow, making it doubly difficult to understand why they would not be publicly reported. This week, they were only delivered after a time-consuming Freedom of Information request from the Alberta Liberals.

Average Albertans may not have a PhD in health policy or know how to perform a triple coronary bypass, but statistics are a part of the health care system most people can get their head around. (If not, then that needs to be addressed with Alberta Education’s curriculum division).

The situation is much like Alberta’s 2013-14 budget switcheroo. Finance minister Doug Horner introduced a new budgeting format divided into three parts: operating, capital and savings. It was different from the consolidated budget Albertans were used to seeing, with a total surplus or deficit number, making it confusing for people trying to interpret the government’s financial choices.

The new budget format, which didn’t retain a version of the old measure, left citizens without an apples to apples comparison of the fiscal picture year over year.

The same now holds true for the critical health care portfolio, which eats up 45 per cent of the province’s budget.

Give Albertans all the data and the explanations. Don’t dumb it down or reinvent the yardstick to make it more politically palatable.

There is no doubt elections can be won and lost based on parties’ perceived performance on health care. The bar was rightfully set high for the previous targets. Changing the performance measures midway makes it look like the Progressive Conservatives are juking the stats.

And it makes it difficult for Albertans to know whether the government is delivering the medicine the health care system needs.