EDMONTON — On Friday, Calgary-Acadia MLA Diana Batten, a registered nurse, announced she had tabled Private Members’ Bill 211: Patient Outcomes Reporting Act. Private Members’ Bills come up for debate on Mondays, meaning every MLA could have the opportunity to support and continue to move this legislation forward tomorrow.
“Albertans deserve transparency and accountability when it comes to our public health care system and patient outcomes, which is why passing Bill 211 should be a no-brainer. It is a straightforward step towards ensuring that is the case,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve seen a troubling trend where the government have made it harder and harder for Albertans to have access to clear data and accurate reporting of what’s happening in our health care system.”
If passed Bill 211 would:
(1) Require reporting of patient outcomes. (2) Make patient outcome data readily available to Albertans. (3) Establish standardized provincial outcome measures. (4) Ensure outcome reporting reflects differences across populations and communities. (5) Increase government accountability by requiring ministers to act on data and develop a plan for improving measured outcomes.
“The government often claims their ongoing, massive overhaul of our public health care system will increase capacity and shorten wait times for patients, but without releasing patient outcome data how can Albertans know if any of these claims are evidence-based, rather than purely ideologically driven speculation?” said Gallaway. “For the most part this is information that is already being collected but not being proactively shared with the public. We call on all MLAs to support this straightforward piece of legislation that would increase accountability and bring Alberta in line with many other provinces who already share this kind of patient outcomes data.”