PrintUNA concerned about Health Minister’s claims about AHS mandate
United Nurses of Alberta is concerned about incorrect claims made by Health Minister Adriana LaGrange in a recent letter published by the Edmonton Journal.
In the letter printed on July 27, 2023, LaGrange claims that "...Alberta Health Services (AHS) has evolved beyond its original acute-care hospital system mandate. Today, it is a comprehensive health organization that serves Albertans across various settings, from hospitals to clinics, continuing-care facilities, and beyond."
What LaGrange is describing has always been the mandate of AHS. The province-wide health authority's mandate has never been limited only to the acute-care hospital system.
When AHS was created in 2008, it absorbed the responsibilities of the former Regional Health Authorities, which also had similar mandates to serve Albertans across various settings, from hospitals to clinics, public health units, continuing-care facilities, and beyond, dating back to their creation in the mid-1990s. Before the creation of the Regional Health Authorities, the public health care system in Alberta was administered by hundreds of local health boards and units.
Section 5 of the Regional Health Authorities Act, describes the responsibilities of AHS:
(a) promote and protect the health of the population in the health region and work toward the prevention of disease and injury,
(b) assess on an ongoing basis the health needs of the health region,
(c) determine priorities in the provision of health services in the health region and allocate resources accordingly,
(d) ensure that reasonable access to quality health services is provided in and through the health region, and
(e) promote the provision of health services in a manner that is responsive to the needs of individuals and communities and supports the integration of services and facilities in the health region.
As the Alberta government moves to decentralize decision-making in AHS, UNA encourages political leaders to not forget or misinterpret how Alberta’s public health care system works.
A review of Alberta’s COVID-19 pandemic response commissioned by the provincial government and conducted by KPMG in January 2021 found that “[l]everaging the size of AHS in coordinating the discharge of patients to other settings such as residential and Long-term Care also eased the management of patient flow and hospital capacity, particularly for Alternate Level of Care patients, across the entire system.”
The KPMG report also determined that “[o]perating through a single health authority also enabled significant purchasing power of PPE and effective management of surgery volumes.”
While there is certainly a need for increased local-decision making in some cases, both history and common sense prove that stability, not bureaucratic restructuring, is key to fixing challenges like the nurse staffing crisis facing communities in every corner of Alberta.
