Progressive Conservative leadership hopeful Doug Horner outlined his goal for a more accessible health-care system while speaking to the Gazette’s editorial board Monday.
Horner dropped in to the Gazette for a wide-ranging discussion, but made clear he would reshape health care in the province while continuing to maintain a publicly funded system.
Horner said the system we use today was designed for a different time and it’s well past time the province find a new approach.
“We have a gatekeeper system and it was built for economic reasons, not medical reasons.”
Horner, whose father was a family physician in Barrhead, said the system puts an emphasis on doctors and face-to-face visits that don’t always have to happen. He said the province pays doctors on a per-visit approach only because that’s the way it has always been done.
“We have created bottlenecks based on historical setup of a system, not based on what is medically necessary or even efficiencies,” he said. “How many stages do we have to send a person through to get a referral to a specialist?”
Horner said people like the system, but struggle to access it. The government can change that with the right ideas and a clear path to implementing them.
“If you try to do something the wrong way in government, just like if you do in business, you are going to get a very expensive lesson,” he said.
Horner said he sees a greater role for nurses and other health professionals to change the expectation Albertans have that every medical problem requires a doctor.
“The reality is that a registered nurse today is trained to 70 per cent of the scope of practice of a family physician, probably better trained than my dad was,” he said.
Doctors are already moving in the right direction with primary care networks, but he would like to go further. He said the conversation about private versus public care is a false dichotomy and the province should focus only on the outcomes for Albertans.
“We are thinking that we have to have this huge drastic change and either go public or private. It is neither of those things. Let’s sit down rationally and think about how do you gain access to the system.”
Horner said there is going to be some resistance to changing roles and responsibilities, but involving health-care professionals will enable changes that are acceptable to everyone.
“You have to tell us what is right about the system today, what is wrong with it and what it would look like if we started with a clean sheet of paper,” he said.
Horner said stakeholder groups representing the province’s doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals are going to have to adapt and negotiate reasonably on the issues. He said the government shouldn’t start the discussion with an ultimatum, but everyone has to be open to change in the system.
“Everybody has to sit around the table and say, ‘what is the outcome of a system that we want to have?’”
The Gazette has invited all six of the contenders for the PC Alberta leadership to sit with our editorial board. Articles about all of the other candidates should be coming in the weeks ahead.
