Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

For years, the Alberta government has been pushing the federal Tories to boost cash health transfers here. Former premier Ed Stelmach called it discriminatory that Albertans receive $240 less per person in health transfers than the rest of Canada - a disparity he said was worth about $900 million annually.

The difference going forward is that Alberta will receive actual money from Ottawa as opposed to a combination of cash and tax points.

an agreement made in 2004 by premier Ralph Klein because of the province's strong tax base.

Hospital spending in Alberta has plummeted from 44.7 per cent of health spending in 1975 to 27.8 per cent in 2009.

“Most Canadian urban hospitals routinely operate at greater than 100 per cent bed occupancy.

Canada had only 1.8 acute care beds per 1,000 population in 2008, the lowest number of all OECD countries except Mexico (the OECD average is 3.6 beds per 1,000 people).

The Huffington Post Alberta  |  Posted: 01/17/2014

Instead of moving closer toward their goal, Alberta Health Services is actually moving farther away from meeting its wait time targets, new numbers show. Research conducted by the Alberta Liberals and released Thursday shows that wait times in six critical categories have actually gotten longer. The figures come months after the province was scheduled to release quarterly updates on the state of health wait times in the province.

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on April 11, 2014.

On April 2, Justice P. R. Jeffrey of Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench rejected the claim put forward by lawyer John Carpay on behalf of Darcy Allen that prohibition on private health insurance in Alberta infringes on Mr. Allen’s Charter Rights. Mr. Carpay based his court argument on the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Chaouilli case that a ban on private health insurance under Quebec law infringed Mr. Chaoulli’s Charter right to security of the person. This claim was not a rejection of access to health care but rather recognition that allowing private insurance to determine Albertans’ access to health care is not a solution to the problems in our public health care system. The Alberta Court found Chaoulli didn’t apply. That’s no surprise. The Supreme Court clearly stated Chaoulli applied only to the specifics of the Quebec case. This Alberta case was simply political grandstanding. We can’t build the health system we want through the courts. A small, angry minority of Albertans wants a two-tier health system where a few people get whatever they want while everyone else waits. The great majority of us want good health care based on need, not ability to pay. The minority just can’t seem to live with losing this argument. Or do Mr. Carpay et al believe in democracy and the rule of law only when they win?

Edmonton Journal Tue May 12 2015

An encounter with a paramedic is something you rarely plan on, but in your scariest moments, the excellent care these health-care professionals provide can be the difference between life and death. Brave, committed, educated and adaptable, these women and men are vital to Alberta's health-care system. There are almost 10,000 registered paramedicine practitioners in Alberta. These dynamic practitioners now permeate all environments in which Albertans receive medical treatment. About one-third of these professionals are employed publicly; the rest work for private contractors, natural resource industries and in dozens of other work settings.

As is the case for other first responders, this daily work can take its toll. A practitioner's work is primarily defined by helping others in need, while having to ignore their own. Victims of car accidents, domestic abuse, and incidents involving children can have lasting impacts on paramedics. In Canada, it is tragically true that some first responders have committed suicide and many more struggle with depression. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has always been a health risk inherent to paramedicine.

Broadcast news Wed Sep 9 2015

OKOTOKS, Alta. - A former Calgary-area dentist who paid for back surgery in Montana rather than wait to have it done in Alberta has lost his challenge of a lower-court ruling that determined he could not sue the government over a delay in getting the procedure done in his own province. Darcy Allen, who is from Okotoks, Alta., had argued unsuccessfully in Court of Queen's Bench that the Alberta government's monopoly on health care was unconstitutional.

Allen's legal team had sought to have a 2005 Supreme Court of Canada decision expanded to Alberta. That decision struck down a Quebec law that banned private insurance for medically necessary services. However, a Court of Queen's Bench judge ruled Allen had failed to establish a sufficient link between the government's practices and the harm he suffered.

The Kirkland Lake Northern News Wed Apr 8 2015

Q When is a tax in Canada not for health care? Almost never. When do governments resort to special health taxes? When they're running for budget cover. Why do we put up with it?

Because governments know they can get away with cowardly cash grabs dressed up for health care, even if they bear no resemblance to health care's true costs and may not even be used to help pay for it. Better to shake down taxpayers in the name of the one program sacrosanct to them, than to outright raise regular taxes or do the dirty work of cutting spending. Ontarians should know this better than most -- they were hit with a massive tax increase, the largest in their history, when the Liberals brought in a personal health tax of up to $900 in 2004 when they were trying to climb out of a budget hole inherited from the previous Tory government. Dalton McGuinty, premier at the time, had only months earlier vowed during an election not to increase taxes. A decade on, with McGuinty long gone, Liberal-ruled Ontario is still in hock up to its eyeballs, with no prospect of whipping its books into shape until at least two years from now. Now, with the collapse in oil prices that have greased its treasury, Alberta is hitting up taxpayers with a special health tax of up to $1,000 on those with taxable incomes above $50,000 a year. Ironically, just four years after Ontario imposed its health tax, then-buoyant Alberta -- oil was trading at $118 a barrel, more than double today's price -- waved a magic wand and made health insurance charges go away. Neither province calls its health charge a tax, of course. That would be too honest.

"We fear the government is doing what governments so often do when an election looms - trying to create a media buzz by repackaging old news to make it sound fresh." —  Elisabeth Ballermann, President of Health Sciences Association of Alberta Edmonton (13 March 2015) — There’s more smoke and mirrors than real facts in today’s announcement by the Alberta government of action to improve emergency care, says the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA/NUPGE).

Friday February 13, 2015 | Ambulance shortages in Alberta Elisabeth Ballerman, the president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, talks about an anonymous Twitter account used by Alberta paramedics to tell the public about ambulance shortages.

The Edmonton Sun Fri Mar 20 2015

The Alberta government will repeal controversial anti-union strike legislation as Premier Jim Prentice looks to "reset the table" with public sector unions ahead of an expected spring election Following a meeting with the heads of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), United Nurses of Alberta (UNA), the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Alberta branch on Thursday, Prentice said the government will move to repeal Bill 45, The Public Sector Services Continuation Act. Passed in December 2013 but never proclaimed, Bill 45 proposed stiffer penalties for unions involved in illegal strikes to the tune of $1 million per day of strike action. The bill was introduced after a costly wildcat strike at the Edmonton Remand Centre in April 2013. Prentice said he personally didn't think the legislation should have ever been passed.

"I didn't go into this meeting offering to repeal Bill 45 as a negotiating chip. That was not the point ... the purpose of the discussion today was to reset the table," said Prentice in a news conference at Government House following the meeting. "I don't agree with (Bill 45). I don't agree with the content of the legislation and we will move forward and define essential service legislation that is as respectful of the rights of our employees as it is respectful of taxpayers." Prentice said the government wants to collaboratively work with unions to define essential service legislation as well as a new contract negotiation process that's similar to British Columbia's, where all public sector labour negotiations go through the Public Sector Employers' Council Secretariat under a fixed fiscal mandate.

Over the years, patients treated in Red Deer have been 14% to 70% more likely to die than those in Calgary

Oct 25, 2016

Red Deer doctors are pleading for help, saying people in central Alberta are dying needlessly because they don't have timely access to life-saving procedures. An Alberta Health Services (AHS) document written in December 2014 — and recently obtained by CBC News — examined the need for more cardiac services in central Alberta.

No confirmed cases of illness but Edmonton patients deemed at-risk warned to get blood tests

Jul 18, 2016 5

Up to 270 patients at a medical clinic in north Edmonton may be at risk of hepatitis B and C, Alberta Health Services warned Monday. A joint investigation by AHS and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta has confirmed that "inadequate reprocessing and sterilization of medical devices" at the Northtown Medical Clinic may have put the patients at risk of infection.

Indigenous life expectancy about 12 years less than total provincial population

Jul 19, 2016

The latest annual report from Alberta Health reveals the growing gap between the life expectancy of First Nations and other Albertans. Indigenous people are dying 12 years earlier than the total provincial population, averaging out at 70.36 years in 2015. That's the lowest it's been in five years.

Jul 14, 2016

Alberta’s new Seniors Advocate, Sheree Kwong See, will help bring the issues and concerns of seniors to government.

Kwong See has worked on behalf of seniors as an educator, researcher and policy expert for more than 25 years. She is a psychology professor at the University of Alberta and holds a PhD in experimental psychology with a specialization in aging. Kwong See is an expert on the physical, cognitive and social aspects of aging and has studied the impact of ageism as a factor in elder abuse. She was appointed Seniors Advocate after an open competition process and will serve until Dec. 31, 2019.

Danielle Smith, leader of the Alberta Wildrose Party (and, if the polls are to be believed, the premier-to-be), said that if her party forms the next government on April 23, it will allow a mix of public and private health-care delivery.Ho-hum.

A mix of private and public health-care delivery – with public administration – is the norm in Canada.

Yet, predictably, Ms. Smith’s comments sparked an outcry.

independent inquiry into claims that ER patients and patients waiting for cancer surgery have either died or suffered unnecessarily because of serious inadequacies in the public health-care system

independent MLA and physician Raj Sherman astounded both politicians and medical professionals when he alleged that 250 cancer patients had died while awaiting surgery and that doctors had been paid hush money to keep quiet about it

a 2002 lawsuit in which a prominent Edmonton thoracic surgeon, Dr. Ciaran McNamee, claimed that he was ordered to stop advocating for more health funding and pushed out of his position as head of thoracic surgery for the Capital Health Authority

On Monday, the Alberta government announced it has been conducting an ongoing investigation into the death of a disabled Albertan who was scalded during a bath at a government-funded group home in the Calgary area.

Deaths from these types of thermal burns in government-funded facilities are rare. But they're not unheard of.

In 2005, Poff was 51 and in the care of the Cypress Hills Health Region in Swift Current. While being given a bath that August, Poff was bathed in water so hot she received first, second and third degree burns to her right foot, leg and buttocks, her family said in a statement of claim. Poff died five days later.

In Ontario, the hazards of health care work were dramatically highlighted during the SARS crisis. Overall, 375 people contracted SARS in the spring of 2003. Over  three quarters were  infected in a health care setting, of whom 45% were health care workers.

Justice Archie Campbell led a commission to learn from SARS, and highlighted the danger for staff working in health care settings – and in this case, hospitals. The report opens by stating “hospitals are dangerous workplaces, like mines and factories, yet they lack the basic safety culture and workplace safety systems that have become expected and accepted for many years in Ontario mines and factories.”

Workplace injuries have been steadily declining over the past two decades.  In 1987, 48.9 of 1,000 working Canadians received some form of workers’ compensation for injury on the job, and this has declined continuously to 14.7 per 1,000 in 2010. While injury rates for health care workers have declined slightly over that same time period, they remain stubbornly difficult to change.

The new NDP government has Alberta health-care advocates hopeful. “We’re definitely hoping that they will stay true to their values in terms of supporting the expansion and protection of public health care,” said Sandra Azocar, executive director for the Friends of Medicare. The now defeated Progressive Conservative government under Jim Prentice had proposed a budget that introduced a health care levy and about $1 billion in heath care cuts.

Heather Smith, president of the United Nurses of Alberta agrees.

Calgary Herald Wed Apr 22 2015

The Wildrose's guaranteed-wait-timesor-go-elsewhere solution is no solution at all. In fact, it's just a thinly disguised ideological sop to two-tier medicine that promotes speeded-up health care for the rich on the public dime, rather than equal access for all, regardless of income.

Few patients could afford to pay room and board for three months while convalescing, making this option available only to the wealthy. Heart bypass patients are usually cleared to fly after a six-week convalescence. Six-weeks room and board would be paid out of pocket. All patients would have to cover the cost if there was a difference between what Alberta pays and what the price tag is elsewhere. As for radiation, which involves a series of treatments that go on for weeks, does the Wildrose envision people flying back and forth to out-of-province clinics while paying hefty airfares out of their own pockets? Not to mention the added costs if a patient experiences complications after a procedure.