Does anyone remember Premier Danielle Smith’s handpicked administrator of Alberta Health Services confidently predicting that wait times for surgeries in this province were about to fall and fall dramatically?
Reduced surgical wait times would be the biggest single mark of success for the health care system under the United Conservative Party, Dr. John Cowell said in February 2023 when he gave his interim report as Alberta Health Services’ interim administrator.
“It is my hope, and I actually believe, that we will be at zero waiting outside of clinical wait time by March of 2024,” Dr. Cowell predicted boldly. “My team and I are absolutely confident that this is achievable.”
Good one!
Dr. Cowell was appointed AHS administrator in November 2022 when the UCP purged the entire AHS board. The same day, then health minister Jason Copping announced there would be a big push to reduce surgical wait times.
Dr. Cowell is gone from that role now. He slipped away so quietly late last year that no one seems to have noted his departure. Premier Smith has since found new ways to reform the health care system.
In the meantime, though, March 2024 came and went and it seems that clinical wait times for surgeries in Alberta hospitals are not getting better and better despite the vast amount of money sunk by the UCP government into getting private clinics to do publicly funded surgeries.
Alas, as a report published yesterday by the respected Canadian Institute of Health Information shows, the spending on private surgical clinics is not delivering the results promised the UCP’s privatization enthusiasts.
According to CIHI’s data, for example, patients who need hip replacement surgery in Alberta only get their surgery done on time 59 per cent of the time – somewhat worse than back in those distant pre-pandemic days when premier Jason Kenney was pumping up private surgical clinics as the answer to Alberta’s wait times.
Indeed, that was the main point of the CIHI report: That Canadians everywhere are waiting longer for priority surgeries and diagnostic imaging than they did before the pandemic.
You’re likely to do better if you need a new hip, though, than if you require knee surgery in Alberta – in which case only 49 per cent of the folks needing surgery are getting it within the recommended time frame.
When it came to cataract surgery, Alberta lags the national average with only 61 per cent getting their eyes fixed on time, compared with 83 per cent in B.C., which also does a little better getting hip and knee replacements too.
Well, as Dr. Luanne Metz, the NDP’s health critic, observed in a news release, “the UCP’s expensive gamble with private surgical clinics isn’t helping patients.”
“The UCP’s contracts with private surgical centres are not helping patients get access to timely, critically needed surgeries nor clearing the backlog to access care,” she said – which, of course, is exactly the point advocates of public health care have been making about private clinics for years.
Dr. Metz, a physician, defeated Mr. Copping in the Calgary-Varsity riding in the 2023 general election.
“Private health care does not provide the health care that Albertans need,” she concluded. “Danielle Smith and the UCP need to abandon their ideological drive towards privatization, invest in public hospitals and commit to publicly-provided surgeries.”
True, but good luck getting the UCP to do that. They’ve got their ideology to guide them, and they’re not going to let any facts get in their way.
Indeed, one could argue there are two ways to interpret the CIHI data published yesterday.
One is that the UCP meets the famous Einsteinian definition of insanity: to wit, it’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The other is that the party is perpetrating a cynical grift: adopting policies that UCP insiders know perfectly well won’t help ordinary citizens but which will result in big profits for their friends and probably generous donations for them.
I’ll leave it to you, my dear readers, to figure out which is the most likely.
So, Danielle Smith is being dishonest? Who could have guessed it? If there was a competition in Alberta for the biggest liar in provincial politics, Danielle Smith has already overtaken Ralph Klein, and he was bad enough. It’s not about improving the public healthcare system in Alberta, because the UCP, like their mentor, Ralph Klein, want to weaken it, with so many cuts, so they can foster the excuse that it must be privatized. However, private for profit healthcare isn’t as great as people claim it is. In the United States, if you end up in the hospital, with a bad bug, some type of injury, or any other type of medical condition, it can leave you very broke. The UCP is about how they can make their rich friends even richer.
Yes, the abundance of private surgery facilities does little to improve health care. In the short run all they probably do is poach some staff from the public system and maybe in the long run too.
However, I doubt the UCP will give up trying. Their party is a mix of ideologues who will cling to their beliefs despite any outcomes or evidence, and opportunists who see a chance to get a bigger part of the government’s health care budget.
It is fair to note health care outcomes are not what they were pre COVID, anywhere. So that part is not entirely the UCP’s fault, although the defeated former UCP Health Ministers surely made things worse here. However, the better measure is a comparison with other provinces recently, which is where we sadly still seem to come up short.
Of course, this fact will not deter the ideologues or the opportunists who come up with the UCPs health care policies and will continue to pursue what aligns with their interests or views.
Great column. Little bit of an issue with this sentence.
“They’ve going [sic] their ideology to guide them, and they’re not going to let any facts get in their way.” “They have”? “They’ve got”?
Phlog: Late night writing … revised. Thanks. DJC
“which is the most likely.”? I pick both!
When promoting her Alberta Pension Plan idea, Danielle Smith loves to point out how Alberta has a younger population than the Canadian average, which is how she argues Albertans should be able to make smaller pension contributions to her pension plan. Ms. Smith is not wrong in that regard; a quick Google search shows that 20% of the population of BC is over 65, whereas in Alberta it is only 15%.
The same metric needs to be kept in mind when comparing health outcomes of Alberta vs BC. If BC and Alberta had equal health systems, the older population of BC suggests they should have longer wait times for surgeries that are generally required by older people, by virtue of the demographics. The fact that BC has better outcomes means Alberta has something to learn from BC.
This has been their plan from the beginning. They only have an 11 seat majority but act like it’s 100%. Swines.
Transparent . . . Accountable . . . Responsible . . . to the shareholders . . . at least. Or . . . “Hocus pocus alakazam, voila! The trick, she is done.” . . . as follows . . .
“Don’t be a sorehead. I’ll show you a trick. I used to be in a magician’s act [The Calgary School, The Fraser Institute, Alberta Enerterprise Group, ect.. i.e., “Getting some dumb bunny to do their work for them.” ]. Now, observe closely. The hand is quicker than the eye. Nothin’ in the hat, nothin’ up my sleeves. I’ll need a watch [Or, in this case Alberta Health Services.] and a handkerchief. Now, I place the watch in the handkerchief and proceed to seemingly destroy the watch. Step back, son, I might hit your fingers. Then I place the seemingly destroyed watch into the hat, thusly. And then a few magic words a wandering gypsy once told me by the light of a full moon, Hocus pocus alakazam, voila! The trick, she is done.”–@ the 4:30 mark
https://www.b98.tv/video/easter-yeggs/
Or something like that . . .
I would be shocked if any right thinking person thought; A) wait times would be shortened and B) this was anything other than a way to funnel money to the private for profit health industry.
I used to think the majority of voting Albertans were sheep, born to be shorn. I changed my mind, they are lemmings.
Flying to Toronto for surgery. Have been hearing from a few neighbors that people are being told they can fly to Toronto for say knee surgery but they need someone to stay with them in a hotel post operatively for x day post recovery then they fly back here Those who require more care at home get family friends to care for them. I think a while ago a knee was 20 thousand I don’t know if that included flights hotel meals etc x2 As one neighbor told me the person who got her knee replaced figured she would be working x more yrs so it was worth the money and of course hopefully decrease in pain and increase comfort in living Not everyone has 20 thousand in a bank just sitting there. Retro story. I was born in Atlantic Canada The province s eye specialist there told my parents that my brothers eye had to be removed My parents decided to go to Toronto sick children’s for a second opinion To do so they had to take out a bank loan Not everyone has money sitting in a bank. It was worth the loan. His eye did not require removal how much does an eye mean How much does a knee or hip replacement mean How fast can a surgeon and his team do 1 say routine knee surgery I wonder How many do they do in a day
OK, so it’s not helping ordinary Albertans. But I bet it’s making a few doctors, and their shareholders, very rich….
Considering the generally poor performance across the country w/ respect to wait times, and the varied use of CSFs in provinces, is it possible there is something else in play affecting the system since the pandemic? This topic deserves a deeper dive, with actual data behind it. Ontario is outperforming other provinces, and also making heavy use of CSFs. In Alberta delays have impacted some projects, while there are also system improvements that could be made across the board that would impact both public and private facilities. Meanwhile VIHA in BC bought up private facilities on the island and integrated them into its system because they were so effective at service delivery.
I know you have a tough job with many files to monitor, but on this topic you can do better with some research. Keep fighting the good fight, David.
With apologies to H S Thompson,
The UCP… just a party of used car salesmen with all the power they need to buy votes and no qualms about destroying anybody else in the province if it makes them money.
Inspired by “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”, p.21, Simon and Schuster
All John Cowell appears to have done is instill fear in the AHS executives that worry about their jobs. I mean, just look at this mutual admiration society video that is ostensibly a vlog to motivate the staff!
Do these morons actually believe that anyone buys their BS? Well at least one of them is AWOL
I mean to include the video, but being a bit moronish myself…
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/about/Page14216.aspx
I’m waiting for Queen Danielle to promote the notion that the solution to ending the backlog and reducing surgical wait times is to don’t get sick/forget about getting surgery. I mean, if you don’t look at the problem, there is no problem, Iama rite?
At this point, may as well present faith healing as the viable alternative to whatever highfaluting book learnin them weirdo sciencey people, who don’t know which washroom to use, and are all about men being women craziness.
It’s funny how you compare Alberta to B.C. First of all B.C. tried the lowering of corporate income tax and found it created zero new jobs and went back to somewhat higher taxes. The minute Jason Kenny got in the corporate income taxes fell in Alberta and you guessed it no new jobs.
B.C. then tried private surgical centres funded by the province. The result was not decrease in surgical wait times, but a massive increase in cost. B.C. has now reversed this and going back to investing in the public system.
The point here is rather than blindly following B.C. with these ideas, Alberta should take note of what works and what doesn’t.
Now that Alberta has the same corporate tax rate as Arkansas, it only follows that we can expect the same healthcare as Arkansas… and schools, roads, water treatment, etc.
As one famous politician once said, “math is hard”. But the math on private surgical facilities and other forms of private delivery of publicly-funded health care — including long-term care – isn’t really all that hard.
For every dollar of public funds going into the service, public systems spend a dollar on providing the care and supporting the operation of the service. For every dollar of public funds going into private delivery, some portion has to be hived off for profit, leaving less to be spent on providing the care and supporting the operation of the service.
So, if the private service gets exactly the same level of funding as the public one, it must spend less per patient and provide a lower level of service as the public one.
On the other hand, if the private service spends exactly the same per patient as the public one, it must get more money from the public purse than the public one.
Another area where the math isn’t really all that difficult is the finite supply of health care professionals to provide that care. Every surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse and physiotherapist working in a private service is one that isn’t working in the public one, meaning that the public side is starved for labour. We don’t educate anywhere near enough health care professionals in this country for our public system, let alone a private parallel one on top of that.
This is purely about greed: cronies of the governing party seek to make money off of the ill health of the public.
We need to put every dime of public funds earmarked for health care into the public system, and invest whatever it takes into making it work better for all of us.
McMaster University did a comprehensive (200K North American facilities) comparing not for profit, to for-profit healthcare delivery and for profit lost on the three most important metrics. For profit was consistently more expensive, decreased access and had higher mortality rates than the not for profit. You nailed it, the only benefit comes to those unethical providers of for-profit healthcare.
I’ve tried to pull up the 10+ year old study on the McMaster website but was unable to locate it, Mr Climenhaga I bet your research skills are far better than mine.
I’ll see what I can do. DJC
Regan:
This may not be exactly the study you referenced, but it seems to cover some of the same territory:
https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-documents/rapid-evidence-profiles/rep51_cma_for-profit-delivery_1_report_2023-07-06_final.pdf?sfvrsn=414ad8fa_5
This one compares private not-for-profit outfits with private for-profit outfits:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12435258/
Thank you for providing these links, but I still haven’t found the study. Now that McMaster is likely at full staffing after the bulk of COVID has passed, I may reach out to them. Any politician pushing for profit delivery, should review all these studies and explain why it’s their preferred option. Otherwise, our healthcare dollars are at risk of becoming their campaign slush fund.
These ignorant Albertans just don’t seem to get it. While they continue to watch these Reformers trying to pretend they are conservatives deliberately treat our healthcare workers and teachers like third class citizens they can’t understand why we are in such a mess. They can’t seem to understand that it’s a huge shortage of doctors and nurses that’s the problem with healthcare and by treating them the way they do why should they stay in Alberta and accept their abuse when they can work elsewhere and be treated with the dignity and respect they so rightly deserve? They are the most important people in our lives. To prove how ignorant they are we have seen seniors responding to letters written to newspapers about leaving stating “ Don’t let the door hit you on the way out”. Instead of supporting the doctors against what these Reformers are doing to them they would rather see their lives put at risk because of a lack of doctors that’s how ignorant they are. Like the fool who told me in 2003 that he was 69 years old and in perfect health and didn’t care what Klein had done to our healthcare system it was no concern of his. Eight months later he died in the back of an ambulance parked outside the Royal Alex Hospital with a blocked bowel. No rooms available, no doctors or nurses to save his life and too ignorant to understand what Klein had done to us. His wife told us he got what he deserved he refused to listen to her or any other family members about what Klein was doing to us. She was a retired nurse and wasn’t that dumb.
My wife and I are in Parksville B.C. and coming through Jasper last Monday saw fools on the side of the road with signs saying “Axe The Tax” in other words believing every lie Pierre Poilievre feeds them about the Carbon Tax forgetting that he was part of the Harper Government who refused to implement a carbon tax and Obama refused to approve our Keystone XL pipeline costing Albertans billions in lost revenue. Telling the world that Canadians don’t give a damn about Global Warming when the world does care is not very smart. Yet here we have Poilievre proving how ignorant he is and not willing to work with the oil industry and the rest of the world to try to do something about it.
I bet with all the ignorant , easy to fool Canadians he will get elected and Danielle Smith thinks he will also, which is why she has opened an office in Ottawa so she will be right there helping him help her steal our Canada Pension Plan and getting Equalization Payments for Albertans to replace some of the billions she is helping the rich steal from Albertans by slashing Lougheed’s oil and tax wealth. What do you think?
Alan K. Spiller: I agree with you. I remember hearing how people were affected by Ralph Klein’s bad healthcare cuts. All those nurses he laid off either took early retirement, or they relocated out of Alberta, against their own will. I remember speaking to some seniors, almost 20 years ago. They were going to sue the Alberta PCs for causing their family members to suffer, due to the healthcare cuts that Ralph Klein did. They said they wouldn’t vote for the Liberals. In retrospect, I should have told them that Ralph Klein was a Liberal turned Reformer. Here, we have Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre telling so many lies, and people believe them. Reformers will say anything to get elected.
Usually to bring down wait lists you keep the O.R.s open and fully staffed. of course that means paying surgeons, nurses, tech. staff, etc and not giving money to the friends of the government.
About a decade or so ago, B.C. had a long waiting list for hip replacements or it might have been knees. Government decided to ramp things up at the U.B.C. hospital. They say it was like a plant specializing in it and the wait list came down.
As to MRIs, some hospitals keep the machines running 24/7. The Nanaimo Hospital does them in the evenings and that really works for people who go to work. Sibling had hers at 10:00 p.m. St. Paul’s Vancouver, friend had her MRI at 4:00 a.m.
It has not been unheard of that O.Rs are simply not being used. The government doesn’t want to spend the money to keep them open and staffed.
Vancouver has Dr. Day and his privatized surgery clinic and it hasn’t brought down the wait lists. If people want their knees and hips replaced asap, they go to the U.S.A. and pay privately. If you don’t have that kind of money you are S.O.L.
People could have all the health care they want and or need. They just have to be willing to pay more taxes and have a government which knows what it is doing.