Alberta health officials share lessons with Sask.
REGINA As Saskatchewan prepares to embark on a single health authority, Alberta officials who went through the same process were in Regina on Wednesday to share their pains and gains.
“This announcement was a bombshell that left people shaken, angry and worried about the future,” said Brenda Huband, vicepresident and chief operating officer for central and southern Alberta with Alberta Health Services (AHS).
AHS launched less than a year after their provincial government announced nine autonomous health authorities, three regional health boards and emergency medical services would amalgamate into one health system.
The many challenges included considerable staff turnover and no method to communicate with health-care providers.
“From an organizational perspective, it was very, very difficult to connect with people across the province to provide them with information, to provide them updates in the early days,” said Sean Chilton, vice-president of Collaborative Practice, Nursing and Health Professions with AHS. “There was a lot of fear about the unknown.”
Mistakes were made and lessons learned since Alberta transformed its health system eight-and-half years ago. Over that time, benefits have emerged for patients and the province’s health-care budget.
Chilton and Huband shared those learnings with health stakeholders from a broad cross-section of Saskatchewan communities and sectors who attended the Health Innovation Summit at Queensbury Convention Centre on Wednesday.
Since the amalgamation, Alberta has stroke centres across the province so residents don’t have to travel to Edmonton or Calgary exclusively.
“We have them in what we previously would have called our regional hospitals — Red Deer, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie — and they all have the ability to care for individuals with stroke,” Huband said.
EMS personnel are trained to start treatment when a stroke patient is en route to a facility in their geographic area.
“The health outcomes are greatly improved and individuals tend to recover much more quickly,” Huband said.
A reinvestment of dollars allowed radiation therapy to be put in regional centres instead of just Edmonton and Calgary. Consequently, patients no longer have to travel four or five hours, but are between an hour and 90 minutes away from a treatment centre.
Moving to a single health authority also reduced administrative costs — to the tune of about $600 million.
The savings were reinvested into patient care and the number of front line health-care workers has grown, Chilton said.
The main focus was to improve health care, equitable access to care and quality and safety, Huband said.
The first six years were tumultuous with five premiers, five health ministers and six CEOs, which contributed to system instability.
“The goals for AHS were changed, our areas of focus were changed, initiatives were introduced, halfimplemented and then dropped,” Huband said.
AHS leaders quickly learned a provincewide health system shouldn’t centralize all decisionmaking.
“The organization is too big and complex and the needs of communities are unique and cannot be met with a one-size-fits-all approach,” Huband said.
In 2011, Alberta Health Services moved to decentralize control and five geographic areas were created — each area with a clinical and operational leader.
“This is a structure we continue to use today and it works well,” Huband said.
AHS was recently recognized as one of the 100 top employers in Canada.
The Alberta health-care leaders spoke at the summit held just weeks before the official start date for the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) on Dec. 4.
Among those attending was Dick Carter, SHA chair, who said the transition team visited Alberta prior to changes being contemplated in Saskatchewan.
Carter took note of Huband’s comment that “one size doesn’t fit all” in a single health authority.
“We have to be sensitive how the changes that we make have to be a little bit different in rural or remote (areas) versus the cities, but at the same time, we want some standardization,” Carter said.
Patients won’t see immediate changes when the new health authority officially comes into existence.
Change won’t happen overnight, but will take years of sustained work from everyone in the organization, Chilton said.
“But believe me, it’s all worth it. I really truly wouldn’t go back to the way things used to be.”