Albertans 'still struggling' in healthcare system one year after provincial overhaul

Last November, the Alberta government announced it would transform and overhaul its healthcare system and divide it into four health agencies.

Alberta Health Services has since been replaced with agencies for primary care, acute care, continuing care and mental health and addiction.

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The mental health and addiction agency Recovery Alberta is already running with primary care set to begin operations next week.

“I’m seeing lots of great things happening across the province in terms of streamlining processes, really looking at improving the numbers of doctors we have in the province,” LaGrange said at the legislature on Thursday.

Alberta’s health minister Adriana LaGrange has previously said the new legislation will help reduce wait times and help Albertans access a family doctor.

She defends the restructuring, saying thousands of people asked for this through town halls and surveys.

“We are making sure we streamline the process and the whole system to ensure it’s actually effective for Albertans,” LaGrange said.

'Nothing has changed’

Dr. Warren Thirsk, Royal University Hospital emergency physician disagrees with the new model. He says from a front-line perspective, “nothing has changed” and the healthcare system is still inadequate.

“The upper echelons of hospital administration seem paralyzed because they are sorting out the new organization, and they're spending their time reorganizing things,” Thirsk said.

For example, he says on Friday there were six patients lying on ambulance stretchers waiting to be taken into the emergency room for “untold hours” and not getting the care they needed.

“None of these problems have changed, and we expect them to get worse as the reorganization proceeds.”

Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare says the overhaul is making the system difficult to navigate for patients

“If you have any further barriers, if you don’t have as much privilege, if there’s other issues navigating a system, now you have four or more systems to get the care you need,” Gallaway said.

Gallaway believes the province should put a full stop on the four agencies and solely focus on the front-line workforce.

“Sign a new physician compensation model so we stop losing family doctors. Sign agreements with frontline workers that will have retention strategies as part of them, because that's what we need.”

Primary care coming

With Primary Care Alberta launching next week, new CEO Dr. Kim Simmonds says she will be focused on recruiting front-line workers, while introducing Albertans to “team based care.”

"You have a variety of health care providers supporting you in what you need, so that could be a family doctor, or a nurse practitioner, it could also be your physiotherapist,” she told CTV News Edmonton.

Simmonds says, in order to retain healthcare workers, the province wants to make sure they’re spending time seeing patients and not doing administrative work.

Listening to Albertans and their needs is something Simmonds says will help improve the system.

“Change won't happen in a day, but I'm hoping every month over month we’re seeing improvements.”

 With files from CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski