EDMONTON — Earlier this week in the Legislature, Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, Matt Jones, stated that: “Concerns were raised about the procurement practices and procedures and handling of conflict of interests in Alberta Health Services (AHS) procurement. I’m pleased to share that the procurements for the central and south zone surgical facilities have been cancelled”.
This information was mentioned in an answer during question period, it wasn’t proactively shared in a government release with further details or information explaining the decision to the public.
“It’s frustrating that our government continues to show their lack of commitment to transparency and accountability when it comes to surgical procurement. If the government believes there were issues with the procurement of these contracts what were they? Who is being held accountable?” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “This is why Albertans deserve a fully empowered public inquiry with a wide mandate to look into the entirety of this government’s health care procurement processes and decisions. This is the only way Albertans can be assured we will get complete answers on the ongoing allegations of corruption.”
These private surgical facilities were procured at a time when the short-staffing situation in our health care system is at a crisis point and many operating rooms in our public hospitals are regularly sitting unused. While there’s no part of the system that isn’t being impacted by short-staffing right now, the crisis in hospital surgical capacity is increasingly self-inflicted as the government continues to double down on expanding surgical privatization.
“Evidence has repeatedly shown the government’s ongoing ideological push to privatize more surgeries into for-profit surgical centres has been harming the surgical capacity in our public hospitals. The cancelling of the contracts for these two surgical facilities is an opportunity for the government to change course, cancel plans for these new private facilities altogether, and instead focus on a workforce plan to properly staff our public hospitals and operating rooms where lifesaving and emergency surgeries need to happen,” concluded Gallaway.