If a student were to write a test and achieve a score of just 18 per cent, that would be deemed a failure in anyone’s books.
So it doesn’t exactly reflect well on Alberta Health Services that a recent survey finds that less than 20 per cent of doctors are proud to be associated with the health superboard. Fifty-five per cent of the physicians polled are pessimistic about the future of health care in this province.
As for nurses, technicians and other employees who work for Alberta Health Services and its superboard, only 41 per cent of those surveyed are proud to work for the organization.
A mere 29 per cent of those people said they were optimistic about the future of Alberta Health Services.
Even Alberta Health Services CEO Stephen Duckett admits the results are “not good.”
If the people who really understand health care in Alberta — our doctors and nurses — don’t have much confidence in the system, Albertans have a big problem.
Hello, Premier Ed Stelmach, are you listening?
Does it not occur to Honest Eddie that it was a mistake to fill several positions on the superboard with people who have no experience in health care?
Is it any wonder that medical staff have little or no confidence in senior leadership’s ability to set and achieve realistic goals?
Not surprisingly, Duckett is trying to paint a happy face on the dismal survey results.
For instance, he says the satisfaction rate among employees may have been particularly low in part because the survey was conducted between Jan. 27 and Feb. 15, before the government boosted the health services’ operating budget by 17 per cent to $9 billion.
But the truth is that many health-care workers don’t have any faith in the provincial government’s ability to manage how medicine is delivered in this province.
Meanwhile, Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith — who just may be our next premier — recognizes that recent events have proven that concentrating power within the superboard has done nothing to make health care cheaper or better.
“I like (the idea of) returning to individual health boards,” she told a public gathering in Innisfail this week. “What’s the good of us chopping off the heads of a bunch of (health-care) CEOs, then paying them $18 million on the way out?”
David Eggen, executive director with Friends of Medicare, is concerned with doctors’ lack of trust in senior management. He obviously recognizes that the concerns of health-care workers are like a canary in a coal mine: sounding an alarm before the situation becomes critical.
If health-care workers don’t trust the system, why should the average person?
It’s time for a complete examination of the management of health services in this province, and a house-cleaning at the legislature.
Change would likely be positive for both health care and democracy here in Alberta.
Lee Giles is an Advocate editor.