Bleeding Money: Alberta’s Private Health Shift | The Tyee
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The UCP’s surgical initiative has crimped care and raised costs, concludes a report. It’s not a new pattern.
  • @[email protected]English
    5•4 days ago

    “The most troubling finding is that public operating room activity was actually lower in the most recent year than even pre-pandemic,” the report’s author, Andrew Longhurst, a B.C.-based health researcher, told a news conference.

    “Provincial policy and funding decisions are encouraging the movement of limited staff, including operating room nurses and anesthetists already in short supply, into the for-profit sector, which, keep in mind, only performs the lowest-complexity surgeries, does not provide emergency care and does not provide followup care,” he said.

    “This is having real consequences on how Albertans are able to access life-saving health care in the province, and specifically surgical care; median wait times under the [surgical initiative] are longer for most priority procedures than before its inception.”

    Longhurst’s analysis shows that while provincial spending on public hospitals increased only marginally between fiscal year 2019-20 and 2023-24, spending on private surgical facilities nearly tripled to $55.8 million from $20 million.