UCP and speed surgery

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on February 27, 2019.

Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes once cited the Canada Health Act’s mandate for equally accessible health care for all while criticizing the NDP’s childcare plan.

In an article printed in the Jan. 19 edition of the Medicine Hat News, he said he was fine with $25 per day childcare for some but surprised “Alberta taxpayers’ are also subsidizing millionaires’ daycares.”

“Why wouldn’t we save our hard-earned tax dollars for those who need it the most,” Barnes inquired.

He suggested access to subsidized childcare should be means-tested, before going on to say that health care is “much different.”

According to Barnes, “People’s fear with health is that we’ll end up two systems – private and public – in competition for our good quality front-line workers.”

In short, Barnes said the wealthiest people in Alberta should pay full price for childcare, while subsidizing it for everyone else is OK. And then he clarified that no matter how much money you earn federal law guarantees health care to every person in the country.

UCP Leader Jason Kenney did not dispute that last week when introducing his party’s plan to implement private health-care delivery in certain areas currently provided by AHS, confirming that all changes would still be funded by public dollars.

Assuming we can take both Kenney and Barnes at their word here, we can likely just ignore the words of Miranda Rosin, UCP candidate for Banff-Kananaskis, who recently told her party supporters, “I think we need to look at a two-tiered system, so that we can get those who have worked hard for their money to get out of the system if they would like to.”

Surely a first-time candidate like Rosin doesn’t decide party policy, and she was possibly just confused about what Kenney’s plan is suggesting. Kenney says his plan is not to offer more private services to Albertans but to use private providers as a way to save money and improve wait times – as in, public dollars will still pay for it.

Of course, regardless of who funds them, additional private clinics will have to get doctors and nurses from somewhere, so it’s hard to imagine not creating unwanted “competition for our good-quality front-line workers.”

But Kenney says, “I believe we can find some savings to do things more efficiently without affecting front-line services.”

Fair enough. So, how will private clinics save money?

Do they pay doctors less but hire more? Are private clinic owners not capitalists? Are private clinics not-for-profit?

Well, according to Kenney, it sounds like the savings will come from churning out procedures.

“The private providers often, they’ll do, I’m told … they’ll do, like, eight to 10 procedures in a day, with one doctor bouncing back and forth between two (operating rooms),” Kenney said in a clip widely circulated on social media over the weekend. “In our system, he has one OR, they come in with one crew, they do the procedure, they shut it down, they turn off the lights, they scrub it, they go on a coffee break and then they come back.

“So they do three or four, while in the (private) clinic they’re doing eight or nine. This is a huge waste of capital, of human capital and the overhead as well.”

Resisting tempting jokes about cleaning up in the dark, or eye-rolled sarcasm at his idea that doctors and nurses sit around drinking coffee between surgeries, Kenney suggested private clinics have one doctor “bouncing” between ORs doing “eight to 10” procedures in a day.

And he thinks this is a good thing.

One doctor works there. They do eight to 10 procedures each and every workday (which seems like it accounts for much of the “eight or nine” completed by the clinic as a whole).

Hands up all those who want to be the 50th procedure of that doctor’s week? Does anyone even want to be the seventh on a Monday? According to Kenney, it doesn’t even sound like these Super Doctors get a coffee break.

Alberta’s health system has forever been, is and will always be in need of improvement. Anything less than always seeking a better way is a detriment to every single person in this province.

But if Barnes agrees most people don’t want a health system catering to one group over another, especially due to money earned, maybe he’ll remind his leader that most Albertans don’t want to be on an operating table where their surgeon is trying to break a personal best for procedures chalked up before noon.