Surgeries at this private surgery centre in Edmonton will be paid for by AHS

A new private surgery facility has opened in Edmonton to perform orthopedic surgeries.

It’s run by Alberta Surgical Group and will provide publicly funded surgeries under contract to Alberta Health Services.

“Kind of like no different than going to your family doctor. It is a private company, private clinic, that is paid for through our public health system,” said Health Minister Jason Copping.

Like at a doctor’s office, the clinic will bill the province directly for surgeries performed.

The province says the goal is to reduce patient wait times.

“The wait times are getting out of control for way too long. Now after COVID they have been able to bring some of these back down to a manageable level, but I think this will be able to help them get it better than that,” said D’Arcy Durand of the Alberta Surgical Group.

But critics say the facility is another example of the government pushing privatized health care in Alberta.

“It’s not about capacity, it’s not about waitlists as the government claims, it’s really just a scheme to accelerate the number of private surgeries happening in our province and to use our public dollars to fund that profit,” said Chis Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, a not-for-profit group in Alberta with a mandate of protecting public health care.

About 50 physicians will be employed at the new facility. Gallaway says there’s a staffing crisis in public health care, and taking staff out of public clinics will only make it worse.

“Opening up a private surgical centre does not create another nurse, it does not create another surgeon, it simply moves workers out of the system into the private system, and we’re already seeing evidence of that in Alberta.”

The province says there are currently 8,000 people waiting for orthopedic surgeries in Edmonton, and more than half are waiting longer than clinically appropriate.

“We're extraordinarily grateful to have those kinds of partnerships which actually expand our ability to deliver service in our AHS facilities,” said Carol Anderson of Alberta Health Services Edmonton Zone.

It’s expected that 5,000 surgeries will be performed at the facility annually.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jessica Robb.