EDMONTON — Yesterday, the Office of the Minister of Health confirmed to DiscoverAirdrie that the controversial proposal to build a facility to house a primary care clinic as well as a second urgent care centre in Airdrie has been approved. Airdrie remains by far the largest city in Alberta without a hospital.
“The project is moving forward with no community health needs assessment, no Request for Proposal or any of the usual public processes for procurement. They haven’t so much as publicly announced it,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “The fact that the government has been so secretive about this every step of the way suggests that the project is more about securing private profits than it is improving care for people in Airdrie.”
Early this year, the government opted to pause the long-awaited renovation and expansion of the city’s existing urgent care centre while they reviewed an undisclosed proposal to add One Health—a private partner—to the public facility. After much public outcry, the government announced the public project would resume. But mere weeks later, they confirmed they had quietly provided an $85,000 grant to One Health to develop a business plan for a new private health facility which would include a second urgent care centre in Airdrie. The full details of this proposal have still not been shared with the public.
“Airdrie residents still haven’t been told what exactly this project is or why it has been approved, how it will benefit them, how much it will cost, or who will be delivering these services. The government and One Health spokespeople keep claiming this isn’t privatization, but Albertans haven’t been offered anything to suggest otherwise,” said Gallaway. “It sure looks like Airdrie is being used as the test case of a new for-profit model of acute care, which would be a major shift in how we deliver health care. What is this ‘competitive process’ that will be used to determine who will deliver urgent care services in this new facility? What is the funding model? Albertans deserve to know.”
This comes at a time when more than 650,000 people don’t have a family doctor, surgeries are being postponed, and dozens of communities are facing continuous temporary closures of their health care facilities, all as a result of Alberta’s chronic short-staffing crisis.
“We are in dire need of action to recruit and retain health care workers. Building a new facility isn’t going to create more doctors, or any of the other health care professionals needed to staff it,” said Gallaway. “In fact, the government’s push towards new private facilities continues to siphon workers out of our public system, making our frontline staffing crisis in hospitals and health centres even worse.”
Adding to the chaos is the fact that the dismantling of Alberta Health Services will see our health care system broken up into 4 separate health agencies, including one for each acute and primary care. There is no indication of how this joint primary and urgent care facility will operate under the direction of two entirely separate organizations, or how this will impact potential workers or patients.
“This government is plowing ahead with major changes to Albertans' public health care with absolutely no transparency to the public. It’s yet another example of this government moving forward with risky, reckless decisions about our health care, with little apparent concern for the patients who will be left to fall through the cracks,” said Gallaway. “The Minister needs to put a halt to this project until she can give Albertans the transparency and accountability that they deserve.”
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