Background

Multi-national American corporation Health Care Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)announced yesterday the $950 million purchase of Ontario-based multi-nationalHealthLease. The deal will add more than 5,000 beds or units in Alberta and the United States to their health care portfolio. Those beds include a 200-bed facility in High River built in part with public funding to a private company called Continuum Health, which was purchased in April by HealthLease. A report issued last year by the University of Alberta-based Parkland Institute showed that private, for-profit assisted living facilities received high return on investment for shareholders but provided a lower quality of care for those living in them than public facilities did. It showed that the private facilities are understaffed by an average of 90 minutes of care per resident each day.

Even before he becomes the leader of the PC party and Premier of Alberta, Jim Prentice is setting the stage for yet another rerun of how AHS governs our health care system. Prentice has pledged to reinstate the "high-profile board" if elected Premier and yesterday Health Minister Fred Horne announced he will fulfill the promise early by returning AHS to what he called "normal governance."

Friends of Medicare attended a luncheon in Calgary today organized by the Economic Club of Canada, where PC leadership front-runner Jim Prentice announced his health care policy. The policy was short and included little detail.

In May 2012, Jim Prentice joined the Board of Coril Holdings Ltd. Coril is a Calgary-based private investment company that owns Inliv, a big medical clinic in Calgary which aggressively markets a product called "Total Health Management," at a cost of $4,495 a year.

On May 26th, 2014 Alberta Human Services advised families of the remaining residents at Michener Centre in Red Deer that starting June 1, 2014, the severely developmentally disabled residents of Michener Center will not be receiving nursing care on weekends and statutory holidays.  Staff working with residents will have to access health links, the nearest walk-in clinic, or hospital to assist residents.

Friends of Medicare welcomes new AHS CEO Vicki Kaminski. Kaminski is no stranger to the challenges of working in complex health care systems.  In 2009, when she became the head of the very troubled Eastern Health Authority Labrador and Newfoundland (EHALN), it was still reeling from the scandal-related to problems with breast screening from 1997 and 2005.  Many credit Kaminski with restoring the public's faith in the Newfoundland and Labrador health care system.

The $18.3 billion going to this year's Ministry of Health operational budget, which includes $10.7 billion going to the Alberta Health Services base operating grant, when considering population and inflation growth, means the government is cutting health care spending per person. The cuts include a $26 million cut to acute care services.

Concerned Citizens of Slave Lake and Friends of Medicare are at the Legislative Assembly today to table a petition which asks AHS to reinstate their four physicians who resigned in December, 2013, citing patient advocacy issues. The resignations served as a catalyst for the community to take a stand on the lack of health care services which faces the Town of Slave Lake and the surrounding areas. Slave Lake had 13 doctors practicing medicine before the 2011 wildfires devastated the town. In the aftermath, five doctors relocated elsewhere. AHS opened the Family Care Clinic (FCC), staffed with seven doctors, four of whom were the doctors who recently resigned.

Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare, made the following statement today following the Alberta government's Throne Speech: