Does anyone remember Premier Danielle Smith’s handpicked administrator of Alberta Health Services (AHS) 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 (UCP), Dr. John Cowell said in February 2023 when he gave his interim report as AHS’ 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 (CIHI) 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 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.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
