Changes to health care will cost everyone, says Friends of Medicare

By Alexandra Noad - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on February 4, 2025.

The changes by the UCP government to the Alberta health-care system are costing Albertans millions in taxpayer dollars, without actually getting to the root of the problem, says the executive director of Friends of Medicare.
Chris Gallaway says he was frustrated watching the Alberta Government announce the firing of the Alberta Health Services board of directors for the second time in 18 months on Friday.
Gallaway says the restructuring of AHS from Alberta Health Services to a hospital-based agency is causing unnecessary chaos and costing Albertans an estimated $87 million due to the hiring of new CEOs, creating logos and creating new committees and commissions.
“We’re very frustrated watching this focus on leadership and restructuring and the chaos that’s being created, rather than focusing on the real issues.”
With the appointment of Alberta Health Deputy Minister Andre Tremblay as temporary president and CEO of AHS, Gallaway says the government is not being accountable and is causing a lot of confusion and stress for health care professionals.
“It’s not accountable in terms of a timeline, a plan or clarity of what’s to come,” he says. “And that’s something we hear all the time from those who work in health care. They don’t know who their employer is going to be, they don’t actually know how this new pulled-apart system is going to function and how their role is going within that, which is causing a lot of stress (and) uncertainty.”
Because of this uncertainty and stress, many health-care workers, including doctors and nurses, consider moving out of province to escape the uncertainty and feel more respected for the work they do.
More than 40 percent of Lethbridge residents don’t have a family physician, and many neighbouring communities have to regularly close their emergency departments due to staffing issues. Gallaway believes that will continue, unless the government decides to focus on retention rather than building a new system.
“We have a real staffing crisis in terms of doctors and health professionals, and that’s what we’ve been calling on the government to address for years now. We’ve been saying government needs to get serious about creating a workforce plan for health care, one that’s focused on retention so we can keep the folks we have right now.”
Gallaway adds that other jurisdictions are offering incentives to our health-care workers to move, and Alberta’s health-care system will continue to suffer unless the government refocuses on helping the system from the frontlines, not from the top.
Along with creating chaos in the system, the government isn’t consulting with the front-line workers, until after they’ve made changes. That’s missing out on an opportunity, says Gallaway.
“(Government is) not working with them to solve issues in the system and as such we’re losing people.”
Gallaway says government trying to save money on wages for nurses and other workers runs contrary to the amount it’s currently spending on restructuring AHS into separate agencies. it would be cheaper for the government to pivot and actually stabilize the system.
“The reality is we’re spending a whole lot of money right now on nursing that cost a lot of money on recruitment plans and these other things, where if we simply retain to what we have, it would be cheaper.”
Surveys from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions show that more than 40 per cent of nurses are looking at retiring or quitting the profession because they are burnt out.
Gallaway says the longer the government ignores the issues, the harder they will be to fix in the future.
“We’ll lose more and more people and we’ll be starting from a worse spot, for sure.”
Friends of Medicare watched the recent situation with a cancer patient being put into a supply room at Chinook Regional Hospital closely, and while it is an extreme example, it really showcased what can happen with over-population in hospitals which is prevalent across the province due to the lack of infrastructure being built.
“We know we’re hundreds of beds short across the province and what we need for our province,” says Gallaway. “The government’s own projections show we will be thousands of beds short in the next few years because we haven’t been building the hospital infrastructure in the last provincial budget.”
Gallaway believes the firing of the AHS board was intentional as a means to gain direct control of the health-care system.
“There’s fewer avenues for the public or media to get answers and the government can directly control every decision being made, so it seems intentional.”
Being the second time, the AHS Board was fired, Gallaway says it very clearly shows the UCP would rather have control to push its own agenda, rather than take the responsibility they have to the public seriously.
“They would rather have a deputy minister in charge, who just does what they ask them to do and they’re not looking for good governance or good transparency,” says Gallaway. “They’re looking for control as they push through this project of restructuring.”
Gallaway encourages anyone who has concerns about health care to reach out to their MLA and the minister of health, with the hopes that if enough people speak up, government will finally listen to the concerns of the people, particularly with the budget expected within the next couple of weeks.

2
-1