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Good News:Alberta's major boost in health spending

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Wait times will be cut considerably, but.... why were there the waiting lists, if Alberta already spends more per capita than any other province. Hopefully they continue to search out the cause of the problem and not just feel throwing money at it will solve it in the long run..

Did they purchase additional MRI machines? They said the waiting lists were due to lack of equipment previously.

Anyway, glad to see that they are making some changes.

Alberta's major boost in health spending will fund more heart, cancer surgeries

Tue Feb 16, 7:26 PM

By Jim Macdonald, The Canadian Press

EDMONTON - Alberta plans to clear a backlog of surgeries as it starts to spend the largest injection of health-care cash in its history, but the Opposition is angry that some will be done in private clinics.

In all, 2,230 more procedures will be performed over the next six weeks, as well 3,500 more MRI and CT scans. In addition to urgent cancer and heart surgeries, the government plans to reduce long waiting lists for hip and knee replacements, neurosurgery and cataract surgery.

But the Liberal Opposition pointed out that 180 joint replacements and dozens of cataract surgeries will be performed at private clinics rather than in public hospitals.

It appears that newly minted Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky has been given the portfolio "to grease the way for public acceptance of a big jump in private surgeries," charged Liberal health critic Kevin Taft.

"If you're sitting in pain because your hip replacement has been put off for a year, then this is going to feel like relief," said Taft. "But it's lousy management and in the long term it's going to give us a worse system."

Zwozdesky told the provincial assembly that it's not important where the procedures are performed.

"Be they in a public setting or a private setting, they are publicly funded," he said.

Premier Ed Stelmach said Alberta remains committed to creating the best performing publicly funded health-care system in Canada.

"At the end of the day it's access and it's quality," the premier told the legislature. "Our goal is to increase access and the quality of care in this province."

For Zwozdesky, this is the latest in a series of fixes that started with halting bed closures at hospitals and a mental health facility in Edmonton.

But Zwozdesky concedes that Canada's most expensive health-care system still needs a long-term fix to make it sustainable.

"The size of the investment we are making in health care, which is the largest per-capita anywhere in Canada, must begin to better mirror what patients and users are telling us is missing," he said at a news conference Tuesday.

Stelmach explained that one reason why health-care costs have escalated in Alberta is because boom times in past years drove up wages for doctors and nurses.

As the recession hit and the energy boom ended, Alberta was forced to close hospital beds, cancel surgeries and leave hundreds of nursing jobs unfilled.

This caused a major public backlash, which was reflected in a dramatic slide in recent polls for Stelmach's Progressive Conservative government.

So the Tories responded in last week's budget with a $2-billion increase in health spending. This represents a whopping 17 per cent increase that pushed the annual health budget to roughly $15 billion.

A large chunk of the new money was used to wipe out the health superboard's $1-billion operating deficit. The board, known as Alberta Health Services, also gets a six-per-cent funding increase in each of the next three years. The six-week surgery blitz will cost $8 million.

Alberta Health CEO Stephen Duckett said the board recognizes that wait times in Alberta are too long. Now they have the money to fix the problem.

"Let's get on and do something straight away while we are working at what we're going to do for the long term," Duckett told a news conference held in an empty ward at the University of Alberta Hospital.

"What we're announcing today is a down payment. What we can do quickly. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be planning what we're going to do for the long-term under a five-year funding agreement."

The government said more surgeries will be added through the spring as more hospital and operating room capacity becomes available.

The province will then evaluate how the extra spending affects waiting times and waiting lists.

One of the government's harshest critics on health care welcomed the news.

David Eggen, with Friends of Medicare, said the province took action after widespread public outcry.

"I hope this is a signal that the government is going to stop playing games with public health care," Eggen said.

"We have half as many beds as we did 20 years ago for acute care in this province. Maybe this is a signal that they admit that they're wrong."

NDP Leader Brian Mason called the announcement a short-term fix that has more to do with healing the government's popularity than the health system's flaws.

"It gives the new health minister a chance to appear as a hero, but it is not fixing the health-care system," said Mason.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100216/national/alta_surgeries?printer=1
 
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