Refocused health-care system paints confusing picture of operational control

By Zoe Mason on October 25, 2025.

It remains unclear how the medical workforce will be co-ordinated as the province rolls out its restructured health-care system.

Last week, the province released a report based on the second round of public engagement regarding the refocusing, which took place from January to May. Recommendations in the report were drawn from 70 sessions across Alberta where 2,035 people contributed insights.

Resource allocation and workforce co-ordination were two of the key concerns highlighted by the engagement sessions.

The province initiated a major overhaul of its health-care system in June. The new system consists of four agencies: Primary Care Alberta, Acute Care Alberta, Assisted Living Alberta and Recovery Alberta. All services were previously delivered under one integrated authority by Alberta Health Services.

The reorganization also involved elimination of geographical zones that previously formed the basis of the leadership structure for Alberta’s hospitals. Zones will be replaced by a decentralized, facility-based leadership structure the premier says would increase the authority of local hospital leaders.

An interim model of the new leadership structure for hospitals is scheduled for implementation next month. The full restructuring is expected to be complete by summer 2026.

Medicine Hat physicians say they have little clarity as to which agency they answer to, and they’re concerned the changes do not adequately account for the personnel needs for services like emergency medicine, anesthesia and obstetrics that could fall under multiple categories.

“While each public health agency oversees the health service delivery in its own sector, there’s strong collaboration and integration,” said Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones at a media roundtable event Monday.

Jones says many facilities house personnel who answer to different health agencies under the same roof.

“For example, right now at the Royal Alex (in Edmonton), I have people working in the hospital who ultimately report to Assisted Living Alberta, Primary Care Alberta and Recovery Alberta. So just because there is a refocused health system where we have a deeper focus in each of the pillars, it doesn’t mean there isn’t collaboration and integration,” he said.

Last month, Medicine Hat Regional Hospital went without obstetrical services for three days, a gap local advocates say highlights the need for better operational planning. Jones says responsibility would fall to his ministry to investigate and resolve gaps like these.

“If you go to a hospital and there are not services there, that would ultimately fall to hospital and surgical health services and to Acute Care Alberta, and Acute Care Alberta will work with the service provider, in this case, AHS, to ensure that those services are provided when patients need them,” he said.

Medicine Hat emergency physician and former Alberta Medical Association president Paul Parks says Jones’s answer doesn’t resolve his concerns about a lack of integration.

“Who’s doing that for Covenant Health? How are different hospitals co-ordinating for the same workforce when there’s a shortage?

“The premier wants to sell off more of our hospitals to different providers,” he said. “Who is going to do the co-ordinated workforce planning for those different hospital service providers?”

Minister of Primary and Preventive Health Services Adriana LaGrange told the News that workforce is broadly overseen by her department.

“What we did recently was we heat mapped the province in terms of what facilities, what services are required across the province, and then subsequently, what is the workforce that needs to be allocated to those facilities, whether they’re acute care or community-based facilities,” she told the News on Thursday.

She says the ministry also communicates with service providers to cross-reference the information.

“It’s a group effort on the data side of things,” she said.

Using the example of obstetrics, LaGrange points to the community of La Crete, where expectant mothers had to travel over 100 kilometres to the nearest facility that performs deliveries. There were more than 300 births a year in the remote community. LaGrange says data collected by her department identified the need and led to the implementation of an obstetrics program there.

Parks was the president of the AMA when the refocusing was initially unveiled, and he says the AMA advocated for a working table with leads from various arms of health care, which LaGrange established. But Parks said this working table was not engaged about integration and operational control.

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