Editor:
The alarm has been sounded. Premier Danielle Smith's semi-secret of how she is going to blow up Alberta Health Services (AHS) is out of the bag. She has been busy travelling around rural areas of the province holding UCP member-only town halls.
She is planning to take away control of what she calls "underperforming rural hospitals" from AHS and transfer operations to third-party administrators such as Covenant Health.
It just shows how out of touch she is. People haven't been complaining about lousy services. They are complaining about the lack of services and that is directly related to staffing, recruiting, retention of doctors, nurses and other support staff.
They are burned out and are walking out.
In a bizarre statement, Smith said that she'd Take Back (a beloved UCP theme) hospitals that were not giving her what she wants and that that tactic would incentivize them, and her second tactic from her bag of tricks was fear.
She says this strategy will improve the delivery of health care and prevent service disruptions in rural hospitals.
Her persistent belief that private is better is getting played out here. In the past, they have already said that it costs more for treatments/surgeries to be done in private facilities.
This is going to be costly, take a long time, create issues around access to some forms of care, and still do nothing to address today's issues. We need some facts here and we need some transparency and plain old fashion common sense.
Marilyn Foxford,
Canmore
