Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky touted more surgeries, more beds and reduced waiting times in his first update on the province’s action plan on health.
Zwozdesky gave an update on the province’s five-year health action plan Thursday morning at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute, revealing a set of results that were mostly higher than the government had hoped for last year.
“We are very much on track, we are doing the best we can and the people in the system need to be very proud that they are doing the best that they can to help deliver what Albertans are expecting.”
Since the province announced its plan nine months ago, the government has added 360 new beds, moved patients more quickly out of emergency rooms and completed almost 10,000 more surgeries.
The surgeries are an increase over the 250,000 the system performs across the province in a year. They included 4,300 general surgeries, 5,000 cataract operations, 200 additional cornea transplants and 290 additional hip and knee replacements.
Alberta Health Services CEO Dr. Chris Eagle said they aren’t just trying to push more people through the system.
“It isn’t just about hitting numbers. It is about improving the care Albertans get every day.”
Liberal leader David Swann was unimpressed with the announcement, saying it represents only a slight improvement.
“Unfortunately, these tiny steps do little to really fix the system, nor do they address widespread concerns about the state of public health care in our province,” he said in a statement.
Though they are not yet hitting some of the province’s own targets for wait times, emergency rooms are doing a better job of moving patients through and getting them admitted.
“The people who are waiting to be moved out of emergency and into acute care beds has been decreased by 51 per cent over the last year in Edmonton and nearly 80 per cent in Calgary,” said Zwozdesky
A proposed plan for addressing continuing care in the province is still being worked on and there are still almost 500 patients waiting in hospitals who would better belong in continuing care.
He said solving that problem has been more complicated and difficult, but he expected to release a strategy on the issue soon.
Zwozdesky gave a lot of the credit to senior management at AHS, but said it had been a system-wide improvement.
“We are improving access, we are reducing wait times, we are helping build the best performing publicly funded system in Canada and we have outstanding teamwork at the top,” he said. “There is a lot going on here and a lot of credit needs to be spread throughout the system to a lot of players.”
Eagle credited the province’s five-year funding agreement for health care as part of the solution, because of the stability it provides as well as increasing resources.
He said the funding is a challenge to the system as well because it comes with an expectation of results.
“AHS is expected to put those dollars to work and make direct improvement,” he said. “We mobilized the resources that we could and brought more capacity in.”
Zwozdesky said more updates on the system would be coming in the weeks ahead, including a new mental health strategy.
