Albertans have every right to be disgusted, dismayed and distrustful in the wake of a week of damning revelations about health care in this province.
But do we have any reason to expect change under Premier Alison Redford?
Or can we anticipate that any of the challengers to the Progressive Conservative dynasty have a better, more sustainable health-care model?
In March 2011, the government of then-premier Ed Stelmach directed the Health Quality Council of Alberta to examine widespread concerns about the delivery of health care in this province.
It was a mess, in great part, created by Stelmach and his predecessor, Ralph Klein. Their organizational fiddling, yo-yo funding and muddled (sometimes even bordering on subversive) health-delivery visions left us with a system in disarray.
The independent investigation was charged with looking into allegations of inadequate care, dangerously long wait lists for patient care, and intimidation of doctors who failed to fall in line.
Last week, the 428-page report landed with a thud. The shockwaves will ripple through Alberta’s political landscape for months to come, certainly through the expected spring provincial election.
The horrible realities detailed in the report will ripple for far longer, and continue to impact the lives of thousands of Albertans who need care.
It is not easy to repair something gone so disturbingly wrong. Nor can the repairs be done quickly.
Health care is a huge, unwieldy machine.
The report talked about horrendous emergency waits (in January in Red Deer, for example, three patients waited more than 100 hours, and the median wait time ballooned to 18 hours).
The report also talked of palliative care patients languishing until death in emergency wards, of political interference in the delivery of care, and of many physicians who were intimidated and muzzled.
And the report detailed the sorry outcome of Stelmach’s 2008 knee-jerk establishment of a health superboard, into which he merged the nine health regions in the province. The massive organizational changes, the report said, “blurred the lines of authority and accountability.”
And the mess multiplied.
Albertans employ 92,000 people to deliver health care. In fiscal year 2012-13, $16 billion will be spent on care and all its related services, an increase of 7.9 per cent or $1.2 billion over the last fiscal year, according to the province. Alberta Health and Wellness spending accounts for more than 39 per cent of all government spending in the current budget.
Obviously, health care is a cornerstone of social well-being.
And the Health Quality Council of Alberta report details clearly some steps that must be take to ensure that cornerstone is structurally sound.
It talks about consultation before restructuring; an independent task force to examine lines of authority; respect for health-care professionals, and an appeal process to serve them; it details priorities for care, including oncology and emergency wards systems; and it talks about the need for detailed forecasting on long-term care requirements.
What it doesn’t do is tell Albertans how these goals will be accomplished.
That task will remain in the hands of politicians. And now is the time for those politicians to start talking, with clarity, detail and imagination.
We don’t need more platitudes about the overarching cost of health care flying in the face of the need for renovations. We don’t need political buzzwords and sound bites on the campaign trail.
We need concrete proposals to provide quality, affordable care for Albertans now and into the future.
And we need it now. We have more than a decade of mismanagement to repair and the structure is crumbling.
John Stewart is the Advocate’s managing editor.