EDMONTON — This afternoon, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government would be ‘decentralizing health care decision-making.’ The new structure will require individual hospitals to hold responsibility for decisions around staff, resources and services, rather than Alberta Health Services.
“Albertans are struggling to access the timely, quality, health care they need and deserve not because of a lack of local administrators, but because of chronic short-staffing, which is being actively worsened by endless restructuring and aggressive privatization efforts from this government,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “But instead of working to repair their relationship with health care workers, and urgently prioritizing a workforce and capacity plan, this government is further fragmenting our health care system and creating even more confusion for patients and workers.”
The model is intended to be implemented by summer 2026, but today’s announcement contained few details as to the rollout, nor how the government expects the creation of potentially hundreds of new hospital-based leadership teams all reporting to Acute Care Alberta and Alberta Health Services will reduce complexity or bureaucracy.
“This government has been unable to recruit and retain the health care workers our province urgently needs, so how do they expect hospitals — many of which have seen continuous temporary health facility closures as a result of province-wide chronic short staffing — to be able to do it on their own?” said Gallaway. “At best, they’re throwing rural facilities to the wolves. But given this government’s track record, we are extremely concerned that they are laying the groundwork for Alberta’s hospitals to be privatized and sold off.”
In April, the government transfered the titles of hundreds of health care facilities to be directly under the ownership of the provincial government through Alberta Infrastructure. This was quickly followed by the announcement of a new Activity-Based Funding model for acute care, a return to a voucher system which prioritizes competition over ensuring quality of care.
In May, Bill 55: Health Statutes Amendment Act made many significant changes to Alberta’s health care system, including allowing the government to appoint entities “other than a provincial health agency or provincial health corporation” to operate hospitals.
Each step of the way, Friends of Medicare has condemned the government’s moves to seize control over our health care system, and raised the alarm that this signals steps to further privatize Alberta’s health care services, including our public hospitals.
“Albertans own these hospitals, and we deserve to know whether the government’s plan for them serves the public interest, or the financial interests of for-profit corporations and their shareholders,” said Gallaway. “It doesn’t matter how flashy the Premier makes her YouTube videos, any plan to sell off hospitals or privatize acute care facilities should be a non-starter. Our hospitals are not for sale.”
Friends of Medicare encourages Albertans to tell the government to stop the destruction and rebuild our public health care system by sending a message at: rebuildourhealthcare.ca
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