Wright asked to address hospital leadership system, wait times in new mandate letter

By ZOE MASON on October 30, 2025.

zmason@medicinehatnews.com

The UCP government issued a new set of mandate letters to a number of ministers and parliamentary secretaries this week, including Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Justin Wright. Wright serves as Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health (South).

Wright’s mandate letter from Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones outlines a new set of objectives with reference to the ongoing health-care refocusing in the province.

One of the priorities handed down from the minister is the implementation of the hospital-based leadership system which constitutes one of the main changes in the new health-care system.

“The great thing about that implementation is it’s going to put a lot more decision-making right in the hands of the local area for what they feel is best for the hospitals,” Wright told the News on Wednesday.

Critics are concerned that the hospital-based leadership model will disadvantage smaller communities like Medicine Hat, arguing that they will have to compete with larger centres like Calgary and Edmonton for resources and personnel.

Wright says local representation was better under the former regional health authority system, which was eliminated in 2008 when the nine regional authorities were absorbed by Alberta Health Services.

Under the AHS umbrella, five zones were used to co-ordinate regional governance. Those zones were abolished by the restructuring, to be replaced by seven regional health corridors yet to be implemented.

“The regional health authorities serviced the community much better. And I think that this is a great step towards bringing some of that autonomy and local decision-making back to the grassroots level,” he said.

“I think, if anything, it’s probably going to give us more of an advantage over some of the bigger areas. They’re going to be fighting for that same local voice, and it’s not necessarily unified between Calgary Mountain View and, for example, Calgary South Health Campus.”

Wright says there is still no timeline for implementation of the hospital-based system, or the seven regional corridors that will oversee them. The province initially said this model would be implemented on an interim basis in November.

“It’s something that’s currently being rolled out. We’re in the midst of making sure that it’s going to be planned out methodically enough that it lands correctly,” said Wright.

The other two priorities articulated by Jones in the letter are addressing wait times and surgical backlogs. Wright says he’s been making visits to medical facilities in the South region to learn what frontline workers think is needed to address those shortfalls. So far, he’s visited 10 per cent of the facilities in his jurisdiction.

“We’ve had quite a difference of experiences as we went along this tour. One facility in Claresholm had a 45-minute window to see a physician, but on the other side, we’ve seen some other facilities where wait times were upwards of four to five hours.”

He says issues raised to him by medical professionals included availability of equipment and room limitations, which he hopes will be addressed as part of the $25-million Rural Health Facilities Revitalization Program. He also thinks the proposed urgent care facility will help address those gaps.

“That’s why I spent two years advocating to make sure that we could get an urgent care centre that’s going to be able to help alleviate some of those pressures on those ER wait times in our facilities,” he said.

The urgent care centre, currently in the design phase, is one of eight planned across the province that were approved as part of a $17-million investment earlier this year.

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