Alberta’s health minister says the new health financing agreement with the federal government will fit in with provincial reforms to the system.
“The additional money will help us speed up what we’re already doing,” Jason Copping said Monday at a news conference in Calgary.
Copping said the United Conservative Party government is focusing on mental health and addictions, boosting primary care and recruiting more doctors and other frontline healthcare providers while transforming more of the continuing care to home care. .
Early Monday, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced that Alberta had become the seventh province to sign an agreement in principle with Ottawa on healthcare financing.
Under the agreement, more than $24 billion will be spent on Alberta’s health care system over the next 10 years.
That includes $2.9 billion for a new bilateral agreement focused on shared health priorities and $233 million in an immediate, one-time supplement to Canada Health Transfer to address urgent needs, including support for children’s hospitals and emergency rooms, as well as addressing the long waiting times for surgeries.
The agreement also aims to improve access to family health services, including in rural and remote areas and underserved communities.
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Alberta joins the four Atlantic provinces, Ontario and Manitoba in signing the health care agreement.
In principle, the deals are a first step toward completing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s $196 billion, 10-year health care financing proposal on February 7.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said while important details still need to be discussed, “we are confident that Alberta will be given sufficient policy flexibility under the agreement to deliver in areas of shared interest.”
#Alberta signs $24 billion, 10-year healthcare financing deal with Ottawa. #CDNPoli #Health
“We are also pleased to see the Government of Canada working with Alberta to enhance foreign credential recognition for internationally educated healthcare professionals and assist with healthcare professional job mobility,” he said.
Also Monday, Smith posted an update from John Cowell, who was hired to head Alberta Health Services after he fired the board of directors in November, citing poor performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cowell said the system is seeing incremental but measurable improvements in key areas of stress.
He said emergency response wait times are now averaging 17 minutes instead of nearly 22 minutes, and the wait time to see a doctor in an emergency room has been reduced by about 10 percent.
Cowell said the number of patients waiting longer than the critically recommended times has decreased by more than nine percent.
He attributed the improvements to more staff, more ambulances and triaging 911 emergency calls to other health providers to free up paramedics for the most urgent cases.
“We still have more work to do,” Cowell said.
“We need more track. The next three months will be critical to continue showing results month after month”.
The opposition NDP said the figures do not paint a true picture of a health system that remains in dire straits, with 32 hospitals partially closed due to staff shortages, while women in rural Alberta have to travel long distances to give birth.
“The progress they’re calling for in ERs is due in large part to the seasonal receding of respiratory illnesses,” said Lori Sigurdson, who is the NDP’s senior mental health and addictions critic.
“The truth is that the UCP has starved and attacked our health care system for almost four years,” he said, noting that the government broke the contract with doctors three years ago and fought to cut nurses’ salaries. during the pandemic.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on February 27, 2023.