Health Minister Tyler Shandro stands outside the Medicine Hat Recovery Centre. -- NEWS FILE PHOTO
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
Medicine Hat Regional Hospital is back up to pre-COVID surgery levels, Minister of Health Tyler Shandro said on Monday after a tour of the facility.
It was Shandro’s first tour of the hospital since being appointed health minister about 18 months ago.
He says Medicine Hat is not regarded as a rural area and he does not think there is any reason to be concerned that certain types of surgeries will be centralized in Lethbridge. The relatively new ambulatory wing at the Medicine Hat hospital has first-class operating rooms and does not need the upgrading that other hospitals will require.
Shandro was also given a tour of the Medicine Hat Recovery Centre and called it an “amazing building.”
“Everyone in Medicine Hat deserves to be proud of this facility,” he said. “It took so long for people to advocate for it in the first place. It sounds like it was 15 years.”
One of the merits is that both residential treatment programs and detoxification are available in the same building and it serves people throughout the south zone.
A week ago, the then Minister for Justice, Doug Schweitzer announced a drug treatment court would be in place in Medicine Hat later this year.
At any given time between 10 and 15 individuals struggling with an addiction, who want to recover and get treatment will have an opportunity to go through the 12- to 18-month program.
Shandro was not in Medicine Hat to announce any increased capacity at the Recovery Centre to accommodate those going through the drug court though.
Shandro said that would be up to the department of justice and Jason Luan, associate minister for mental health and addictions.
“I know that is something they’ve been working on for quite a while,” said Shandro.
In February, Shandro announced that Alberta was terminating its contract with doctors and was imposing a new fee structure effective April 1. This would prevent an additional $2 billion being added to the physicians’ budget over the next three years.
Shandro disputes that terminology, claiming there never was a contract or agreement with doctors but rather an arrangement that had been made with former premier Alison Redford under the previous conservative government. He says his office is working with the Alberta Medical Association on a resolution.
Dr. Paul Parks, Medicine Hat emergency physician and president of the emergency medicine section for the AMA, recently said that morale is at “an all-time low” for physicians.
A decade ago it was very hard to find a family doctor locally. Parks predicts that will happen again.
“Many who were considering retiring or leaving are going to speed that process up and some will leave for sure,” said Parks. “There is no question we are going to have an extremely difficult time recruiting in Alberta and it will be even harder in rural communities like ours.”
