New Alberta Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky probably didn’t have a lot of input into reversing plans to close mental health care beds at Alberta Hospital Edmonton. He wouldn’t have been on the job long enough. But — apart from the staff at the hospital, their patients and families — he and Premier Ed Stelmach will be the biggest beneficiaries of the change.
This week, instead of shutting down 246 beds at the hospital, 100 beds are now planned to be moved to a more modern Villa Caritas in west Edmonton, dedicated to serving geriatric mental health patients.
The rest will stay where they are, indefinitely. That’s because the new health minister vowed nobody’s going anywhere until the promised community care programs are fully ready to accept them.
There aren’t enough community care programs in place to serve the current population that needs them, much less accept another 150 patients who were so sick their doctors had them hospitalized.
Alberta Health Services is not in the business of adding capacity, if doing so will also add costs. We have surgical care beds in our regular hospital wards for a reason: that’s the most efficient way to give acute care to people who need it. The same applies for people with an acute mental illness. So if it’s cheaper for them to stay where they are, that’s exactly what you can expect to happen.
The panel appointed by the premier to consult with doctors, hospital staff and patients has put out the immediate political fire. They found a way to give hope to the patients and their families, while spending around $5 million to upgrade Villa Caritas to accept patients in rather better accommodations than they had at Alberta Hospital Edmonton.
Plus, they gave Zwozdesky a perfect walk-in to stage the grand announcement — in the Alberta Health superboardroom, no less. He added that he’s going to be a hands-on kind of minister. The subtext: not like that other guy.
Reserve one very small mote of pity for previous minister Ron Liepert. In political terms, he couldn’t have made this announcement, especially alongside the panel that overturned the original plan.
He created Alberta Health Services at arms-length from political interference. He hired Stephen Duckett to head that service, out of reach of political lobbying.
Overturning the bed closures is exactly that, political interference. Not only does Duckett now report to a “hands-on” minister, he will be at health superboard meetings that will include MLA Fred Horne, a personal envoy of the premier.
That is a seismic shift in the health-care landscape, and without doubt Duckett and the superboard are shaken by it.
What this proves is that, even in laissez-faire Alberta, people want control over their health care. Complain if you want to about a democratic deficit, Albertans will rally and punish any government that makes sweeping changes in health care without consulting us first.
The plan was to change the delivery of care programs for 250 patients who exist at the fringe of our consciousness, in the sphere of mental illness. Presumably, 100 were quite old and unlikely to improve enough to ever leave an institution of some kind.
Yet when Alberta Health Services decreed that they would be placed into some kind of undefined “community care” option, the reaction hit the political fan.
Stelmach will never forget this and he’ll see to it that Duckett never does, either. Liepert is already on his way to being forgotten, at least in health care.
Zwozdesky was on the inside, able to watch it happen. Lessons learned.
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.