Medical association president shares unease with acute care system

By Medicine Hat News on June 1, 2024.

news@medicinehatnews.com

Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Paul Parks expressed his concerns on current conditions that are causing physicians to change practice patterns during a virtual town hall May 22 with 250-plus acute care, hospital and community-based specialists in attendance.

Parks is asking all AMA members to watch the town hall video that highlights the lack of surgical assistants, nurses, pharmacists and other health-care workers who make up the backbone of the health-care system.

“Colleagues are no longer confident they can continue to deliver the care they have been trained to provide,” Parks said in a letter to members authored May 24. “Patient access to their services is steadily worsening.”

Parks says health human resource shortages that cause delayed testing, procedures, consultations and treatments are at the heart of most concerns the association receives from its members.

“Patients linger in hospitals instead of appropriate alternative levels of care spaces, slowing or stalling patient flow through the hospitals,” says Parks.

In advance of a new health statutes amendment act that will transition the province’s unified health-care system to four provincial health agencies, the AMA has formed a working table to “generate advice for the Minister of Health on issues and solutions from a physician perspective.”

The association is looking for leaders in the health system’s four sectors to apply to sit on the Health System Refocus Working Table.

“If you think you are right for the opportunity, we need the insight that our physician leader expects we can provide,” says Parks.

If passed, Bill 22 will enable the transition to an integrated system of health agencies that include primary care, acute care, continuing care and mental health and addiction.

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