Ministry staff raised red flags about clinic
Copeman might be breaking law, memo warns
An internal Alberta Health memo shows ministry staff were raising “serious concerns” about potential violations of provincial laws by a controversial private Edmonton health care clinic eight months after it opened.
The Copeman Healthcare Clinic opened in the Glenora area in May 2012, offering private medical and preventive health services to patients who shell out more than $3,000 annually.
Patients can also make regular appointments at the clinic for medical concerns. Doctors bill the provincial government for those appointments since it’s illegal to charge fees for publicly insured treatments. It’s a grey area that has raised questions about the legality of private health centres that charge annual fees for uninsured, boutique health services while billing the public health care system for regular medical appointments.
A document obtained through freedom-of-information legislation by the Alberta Federal of Labour and provided to the Journal shows Alberta Health was raising red flags about the clinic’s potential violations of provincial legislation less than a year after it opened.
The document, dated Jan. 10, 2013 and written by senior policy analyst Chrissy Searle, highlights comments made by the Edmonton’s clinic’s executive director, Rick Tiedemann, in a 2012 Metro News article “that have caused concerns for Alberta Health … and will require further clarification.”
The news article quotes Tiedemann as saying “Alberta Health is still billed for all procedures covered; part of the membership fee goes toward paying the doctor for additional time.”
That statement “raises serious concerns that the Copeman Healthcare Centre may be in contravention of the (Alberta Health Care Insurance Act) since the membership fees may be considered extrabilling,” the Alberta Health memo states.
The memo also takes issue with a claim from Tiedemann that doctors at the Copeman clinic have no more than 450 patients each, while family doctors have between 2,000 and 3,000 patients. Under the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act, it is illegal to collect fees for any service if that fee is a condition to receiving an insured service produced by a physician.
“The statement made by the Executive Director above indicates that Copeman may be violating this prohibition by voluntarily limiting their practice to only individuals who can pay the membership fee,” the memo states.
A spokesman for Health Minister Fred Horne would not comment on the memo’s contents and instead issued a statement that said the province is committed to “fair and equitable access to publicly funded health services based on medical need.”
Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan said that while many Albertans have had concerns the Copeman clinic is operating outside of the law, the memo shows even staff within Alberta Health held that view.
“If the Redford government is serious about its stated commitment to medicare, they need to answer the questions that have been raised by their own officials about the Copeman clinic,” McGowan said. “And their silence speaks volumes about their real priorities.”
Treena Popowich, business development manager for the Copeman clinic, said its preventive and multidisciplinary approach to health sets it apart from typical health care centres. The annual fees cover those “over-and-above” services, Popowich said. The most popular program costs members $4,200 the first year and $3,200 in subsequent years.
Popowich said the clinic does have some patients who are not members, but said whether those patients are accepted for medical appointments is left to the discretion of the clinic’s doctors.