EDMONTON, AB (June 8, 2015): The NDP plan to beef up and centralize Alberta Health Services (AHS) away from local decision makers will mean less quality care for patients, Wildrose Health Shadow Minister Drew Barnes said today.
The announcement was made today by the NDP after the release of AHS’ ‘Patients First Strategy’ and is a back down from the health districts model endorsed by AHS president and CEO Vickie Kaminski in March.
“Our health care system needs to be about curing and serving patients on the local level through front-line workers, not through high priced managers at AHS,” Barnes said. “With the challenges facing our health care system, we should not be centralizing health care to one superboard, but should put those resources towards front-line services and local decision makers.”
Wildrose campaigned on a commitment to empower local decision making and gradually decentralizing the delivery of health care services to the local level.
“Having one centralized health board in the province, hundreds of kilometers away from many cities and communities across the province is not a recipe for success,” Barnes said. “We need to make our health care system about patient-centred delivery, and get rid of the bureaucratic layers interrupting quality care.”