EDMONTON — In recent weeks, Albertans have heard repeated, troubling news about the state of surgeries in our hospitals, first about 90 orthopedic surgeries out the Royal Alexandra Hospital were postponed, followed by the news that orthopedic surgeries at the facility have now been halted until August 11. The Alberta Medical Association (AMA) has also been raising the alarm over the frequency of general surgery diversions as a result of these ongoing staffing shortages, which have since expanded to include trauma care diversions.
While the Health Ministry has attempted to place some of the blame for cancellations on the University of Alberta, and pass the buck to Alberta Health Services, the reality is that the UCP government’s aggressive privatization of surgeries is making the situation worse.
“The short staffing situation in our health care system is at a crisis point.” says Chris Galllaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “There’s no part of the system that isn’t being impacted by short-staffing right now, but the crisis in hospital surgical capacity is increasingly self-inflicted as the government continues to double down on expanding surgical privatization.”
The government’s recently released 2023-2024 Annual Report on Health, shows clearly that the proportion of surgeries being completed by private, for-profit facilities in Alberta grew from 16.2% in 2022-2023 to 20.5% in 2023-2024. At the same time, the data reveals that Alberta saw an actual drop of 4,800 fewer surgeries being completed in our public health care system last year, compared to the previous fiscal year,
“The government’s own data clearly shows that expanding for-profit surgical facilities has led to reduced surgical capacity in our public hospitals, with thousands fewer surgeries being completed in the public system last year,” says Gallaway. “A private surgical centre doesn’t create more nurses, doctors, anesthesiologists, or any of the other health care workers necessary to provide surgical care. Instead, private facilities siphon limited health human resources out of our public system, regardless of when and where they’re most needed.”
Data released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) this April showed only 59% of patients waiting for priority procedures fell within the clinically recommended wait times, despite government promises that their chartered surgical initiative would result in no one waiting outside of clinically recommended wait times by March 2024. A 2023 report from Parkland Institute also found that the provincial government’s strategy was failing to bring down wait times for Albertans, and was in fact worsening them by reducing the province’s overall surgical capacity.
“The evidence is clear that surgical privatization is hurting our public operating rooms and leaving many Albertans waiting even longer. But the government refuses to listen,” said Gallaway. “Thousands of Albertans have had their surgeries postponed or cancelled in the past few years. Some multiple times. They deserve to know decisions about their health care delivery are being made based on the best medical evidence and data, not solely on this government’s ideological push to secure profits for private surgical operators.”
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