Alberta Premier Danielle Smith set to launch sweeping health-delivery changes in 2024
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Premier Danielle Smith is set to take scalpel and bone saw to Alberta's $17-billion health-delivery system in 2024, while simultaneously scrambling to keep and find more family doctors.
Premier Danielle Smith is set to take scalpel and bone saw to Alberta's $17-billion health-delivery system in 2024, while simultaneously scrambling to keep and find more family doctors.
One goal can't wait on the other, Smith said in a recent year-end interview.
"We won't be able to solve the front-line problems without doing a massive reorganization," said Smith.
"Our nurses are getting burnt out after two years and leaving our system. Paramedics last about five years on average. Doctors have reduced their private practice and not enough are going into primary care.
"That's a management problem … decisions that either don't get made or get pushed off, or bad decisions get made. And that has a huge impact on morale."
Smith's United Conservative Party government is expected in the spring sitting to begin passing laws to make good on her plan to dismantle Alberta Health Services, the centralized body that oversees health delivery on everything from acute care to community care.
AHS is to be replaced by four agencies, while being reduced to the role of service provider in acute care.
