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"I'm eating my cookie" = "no comment"

Silver

Well-known member
Apparently several of his colleagues are stepping down as a result. I'm hoping this story doesn't end up getting called "cookie gate" as time goes on. :D
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Silver said:
Apparently several of his colleagues are stepping down as a result. I'm hoping this story doesn't end up getting called "cookie gate" as time goes on. :D

The whole episode is like a soap opera.

"As the cookie crumbles"

"like crumbs through an hour glass, so are the cookies of our lives"

"all of my cookies"

"one cookie to eat"

"Bold and the beautiful wafer"

:lol:
 

beethoven

Well-known member
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/College+Physicians+Surgeons+Alberta+website+hacked/3894642/story.html

EDMONTON — The website of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta was hacked temporarily Saturday morning, but the college’s registrar said the hacker had no access to any personal information about or complaints against provincial doctors.

“I can say that with confidence,” said the college’s registrar, Dr. Trevor Theman, currently in Jasper for a weekend management retreat. “We have a clear separation between our website and all of the important information that we collect and gather about physicians and such. … There is no important information that can be accessed through our website.”

The college is in charge of licensing the 7,500 doctors practising in Alberta and investigates complaints into physician conduct. Doctors also log in to the website to pay annual member fees.

All the credit card information, details about complaints or personal addresses or phone numbers of the doctors are not accessible through the college’s main website, which is hosted by a company called Softworks.

Two other websites hosted by the company were also hacked Saturday morning, Theman said.

“It was an attack against Softworks in a sense,” he said, noting the company had the college’s site back up and working quite quickly. The site was down from about 8 to 11 a.m., during which no physician would have been able to renew their college memberships. No viruses were inserted.

“This was vandalism only,” Theman said. “All they did was take over the home page.”

The situation was nothing like what happened in Manitoba, he added.

In October, the website of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba — which does contain confidential information — was also hacked.

That hacking was investigated by police, but the Manitoba college’s registrar said it didn’t appear any data was tampered with or stolen.

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
 

beethoven

Well-known member
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Sherman+claims+Stelmach+tried+take+medical+licence/3890410/story.html

MLA Raj Sherman accuses Premier Ed Stelmach of trying to take his medical licence

By Renata D'Aliesio, Calgary Herald November 27, 2010

EDMONTON – Edmonton MLA Raj Sherman, punted from Tory caucus Monday, accused Premier Ed Stelmach today of trying to take away his medical licence, an allegation refuted by the premier.

Speaking on a radio show, Sherman, now sitting as an independent member of the legislature, alleged some Tory caucus members have questioned his mental stability. He noted he received a call Thursday from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta advising him someone phoned the organization and suggested his mental ability to function as a doctor has been compromised.

Sherman, elected in March 2008, still works part time as an emergency care doctor in Edmonton. He was suspended indefinitely from Tory caucus earlier this week after he assailed the premier, cabinet, and Alberta Health Services over their handling of health care.

Sherman said his medical licence could be taken away if he doesn't submit to a mental assessment.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta would not confirm whether a complaint against Sherman has been made, citing legislation that mandates confidentiality.

After talking about the complaint against him to the physicians college, Sherman launched into accusations against the premier, Children and Youth Services Minister Yvonne Fritz, and Tory caucus whip Robin Campbell.

"I was told that the premier is going after my medical licence," Sherman said on the radio.

"Now I'm going to break caucus confidentiality here. That's exactly what the premier said on the day they decided to throw me out."

Stelmach said the allegation is false.

"That simply is not true. I don't have the authority to do that," the premier said. "I can't even take someone's driver's licence away, so it's not true."

The premier also shot down suggestions that Tory MLAs are engaged in a smear campaign against Sherman.

"It's not true. I know that our members reached out to him and have offered support. We've all chatted with him and spent some time with him," Stelmach said.

On Thursday, Sherman alleged members of the Conservative caucus have participated in a weeks-long "whisper campaign" to discredit him by questioning his mental stability.

The issue is expected to come up in the legislature Monday, when NDP Leader Brian Mason said he will raise a "point of privilege" that targets Tory MLA Fred Horne as one of those working against Sherman.

Horne, who was named the government's new parliamentary assistant for health after Sherman was dismissed from the Tory caucus this week, was accused of telling Dr. Patrick White, president of the Alberta Medical Association, that Sherman was "manic."

Horne acknowledged on Thursday calling White out of concern for Sherman, but denied trying to smear him. Horne added that he and Sherman have been friends for a long time, before they both entered politics in 2008.

Today, White exonerated Horne in a letter to members of the Alberta Medical Association. White said he, Horne and Sherman have been friends for several years.

"In short, yesterday’s events were driven by friendship: by friends doing what they thought was best for a friend," White wrote. "Yesterday I received a telephone call from Mr. Horne, who expressed concerns about Dr. Sherman’s well-being.

"Based on my conversation with Mr. Horne, I telephoned three emergency physicians whom I know to be not only colleagues but also friends of Dr. Sherman, and I asked them if they could look out for him."

White told the Herald that Horne never used the word manic. White said he used that word when he phoned three emergency physicians, asking them to look after Sherman. However, he added that he was making an assumption and has no medical opinion of Sherman's mental state.

"I have seen no evidence and have no belief that this was part of a (whisper) campaign whatsoever," White said.

Sherman, though, unleashed more accusations today, alleging on the radio that Fritz, the children and youth minister, questioned his mental stability to his face during a caucus meeting. He alleged that she said, "Raj, you need to be taken to emergency and you need to see a psychiatrist to be locked up."

He then accused Tory caucus whip Robin Campbell of calling him a cancer. Sherman said Campbell told him, "Raj, you're a doctor. You know what we do with cancers. We cut them out."

Cam Hantiuk, a spokesman for the premier, noted Fritz is gentle, soft-spoken, and doesn't have a mean streak in her.

"We've heard Dr. Sherman make a number of allegations that he's admitted are second- and third-hand information," Hantiuk said. "It's my position that they should be substantiated."

Horne is expected to address the media later today.

With files from the Edmonton Journal

[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
 

beethoven

Well-known member
http://www.albertadiary.ca/

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

That five-year plan: Why Ed Stelmach and his Conservatives can’t fix Alberta’s health care mess

A Velvet Fog rolled over Edmonton today, but it failed to obscure the health care shambles that dogs the Conservative government of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach.

Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky – known as the Velvet Fog for his normally mellifluous ways – waved a “five-year health action plan” at a hastily arranged news conference in hopes of diverting attention from yesterday’s embarrassing leak of a political strategy to foist privatized health care on Alberta after the next election.

We’ll leave it to the mainstream press to provide the details of today’s meaningless document, which was rushed into print days ahead of schedule to cover up the government’s latest embarrassment.

The trouble with the Conservative plan rattled off by an uncharacteristically nervous Mr. Zwozdesky and a rattled looking Dr. Chris Eagle, the new CEO of Albert Health Services, is that it’s unlikely to mean much if the Conservatives manage to get re-elected.

“These five-year plans are good for about a year and a half, when the next election is,” said a blunt spoken NDP Leader Brian Mason after the lunch-hour newser. “Anything they promise today will be meaningless in the future. … You can’t trust them, and you particularly can’t trust them on health care.”

Liberal Leader Dr. David Swann, himself a physician, cut to the chase about the problems with health care delivery in Alberta: “This structure simply cannot work. … We need a new organizational structure.”

The structure Dr. Swann was talking about is barely two and half years old. But the fact is, Mr. Stelmach’s Conservatives contributed significantly to Alberta’s current health care crisis when they eliminated the province’s nine regional health authorities in May 2008.

From the moment they announced the disastrous decision to roll the regions plus the Alberta Cancer Board, the addictions commission and the mental health board into a single entity, the Alberta Tories touted the alleged cost savings of amalgamating health services in a huge centralized bureaucracy. They still do, although to date few savings have materialized.

While it is true some duplication was eliminated, for example among traditionally over-paid top executive positions, Albertans can see clearly now that that there are also huge dis-economies of scale in the central-planning approach to health care foisted on an unwilling Alberta by former health minister Ron Liepert.

As blogger Ken Chapman recently commented, “a lot of good work and service capacity was lost in the process, especially in the Capital Region.”

It is likely that Mr. Liepert cooked up this tragic plan – tragic because Albertans are literally dying needlessly while they wait in emergency wards because of it – for all the wrong reasons.

Of course, he’s never said why he really did it, but it is reasonable to conclude that the political need to be seen to be doing something, the desire to break the political power of the Calgary Health Region’s sometimes outspoken leadership and the urge to mess up health care delivery just enough to open the door to privatization all played a role in creating this disaster.

The acerbic and undiplomatic Mr. Liepert compounded the problem by hiring the similarly acerbic and undiplomatic Australian economist Stephen Duckett to head the giant new health care enterprise.

In all of this, Mr. Liepert had Mr. Stelmach’s complete support.

When Mr. Liepert became a lightning rod for Albertans’ anger at the growing crisis in health care, the premier replaced him with the more-sensible and diplomatic Mr. Zwozdesky. But, really, by then it was too late.

When Mr. Duckett embarrassed the government on Nov. 19 with his notorious Cookie Walk, he was fired at a cost to taxpayers of $680,000. But that decision came far too late to mean anything.

For all these reasons – history, hubris, ideology – Alberta’s Conservatives under Mr. Stelmach’s leadership simply cannot fix this crisis.

This would not be so bad if an opposition party were waiting in the wings with the convictions and vision to restore health regions with enough administrative tweaks to solve the overabundance of independence that Mr. Stelmach’s Conservatives were clumsily trying to address.

Instead, alas, the most likely successful challenger is the far-right-wing Wildrose Alliance, a party that proposes a solution sure to make the situation even worse – the chaotic reintroduction local hospital boards throughout Alberta.

Of course, under former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith, the Wildrose Alliance is a party deeply committed to “free-market solutions.” The Alliance leadership knows well that the introduction of hundreds of hospital boards will ease the transition to a much-higher degree of privatization in the system.

It also knows that unenforceable legislative limits on waiting times for Emergency Rooms – a dangerous policy foolishly backed by Legislative Opposition parties that should know better – will help achieve the same ends.

What Alberta really needs is a return to health regions, a structure that sensibly balances economies of scale with unique regional needs.

The Conservatives have made much of the fact medical services were not delivered in identical ways in all regions, as if this were some sort of disadvantage to the party’s rural heartland in particular. In fact, the population-based funding system in use for a time in Alberta made sense as a way to balance the different needs of different regions.

Think about the needs of the population in the old Northern Lights Region based in Fort McMurray, which is biased toward young people and young people’s health problems, and that of the former Palliser Health Region in Medicine Hat, weighted toward an older population and its needs.

Different blends of health services for different populations makes sense. It can deliver better service at a lower cost. It also responds more quickly to changing needs. This is why, of course, health regions remain the favoured way to deliver health services elsewhere in Canada.

A centralized province-wide health board, by contrast, simply can’t respond as effectively as a region could. Got an Emergency Room problem in Lethbridge or Red Deer? Well, they’re still working on a provincial admissions policy in Edmonton… And so we find ourselves in our present fix.

Even needed short-term solutions, such as opening more continuing care beds to ease the crunch in emergency departments, take longer when they must be solved by a bloated super board.

That’s a large part of why, in fact, rural Alberta liked regional health boards. As William Munsey of New Sarepta, an Alberta Party board member, recently pointed out on his blog, rural Albertans are not naïve about what they need from government or unprogressive in their core values.

Obviously, they realize the quality of their local health services will decline under the centralized model being provided by the Conservatives, and that it will all but disappear under the privatized approach favoured by the Wildrose Alliance.

The profound wish of Albertans in every part of the province is to see this crisis solved and our province return to the world-class medical services we had just a few years ago.

The promise that Mr. Zwozdesky trotted out today is for more of the same. If this keeps up, Mr. Stelmach’s Conservatives are going to find themselves on life support
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
There would be nothing wrong with a little privatization.

From the moment they announced the disastrous decision to roll the regions plus the Alberta Cancer Board, the addictions commission and the mental health board into a single entity, the Alberta Tories touted the alleged cost savings of amalgamating health services in a huge centralized bureaucracy.

Is this a clue?

No matter how much the Government amalgamates, they will still be bureaucracy heavy.

Before the vehicle registration/licensing offices were privatized, they were not too efficient either.
 
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