CALGARY — A panel examining problems in Alberta’s health system says some doctors who fight for their patients are feeling ostracized or penalized.
Dr. John Cowell says some doctors report having their hospital privileges scaled back, contracts cancelled and being shunned in the workplace.
Cowell, head of the Alberta Health Quality Council, made the comments in an interim report.
The arms-length agency was asked by the province to examine problems in the system, including long wait lists and physician intimidation.
Cowell says long wait times continue to be an issue.
The review was spurred in part by allegations of payoffs to doctors to keep quiet and of scores of avoidable deaths in the system, but Cowell says he has so far found no evidence of that.