“A quick fix rarely leads to a long-term solution.”
That’s a basic principle of good management, and a good guide for life.
But for 16 years, Alberta’s health care system has been the victim of an unending stream of quick fixes. Programs abruptly cut, and then reinstated. Training for nurses and doctors chopped, increased, and then frozen. Boards dissolved, regions formed and disbanded. Funding sliced, then ramped up, then sliced again.
Here is one example of a behind-the-scenes disruption. The chief civil servant in every government department is the Deputy Minister, whose job is to run their department and report to their political leader, the Minister. In the private sector the Deputy Minister is like the CEO, and the Minister is like the Chairman of the Board. Here’s the thing: in Alberta in the past 16 years, there have been 11 different Deputy Ministers of Health, some permanent and some acting. Time and again when government leaders wanted a quick fix they turfed out one Deputy Minister and brought in another. No competent board of a private corporation would change their CEO every 18 months for 16 years; it would bring the organization to its knees. But that’s what this government has done to health care.
Albertans are told over and over that our public health care system is not sustainable. That is not true. What’s not sustainable is a system plagued year-after-year by botched government management and failed leadership.
In recent months there has been such a spike in the number and severity of health care concerns brought to my office, that I’m publishing this special issue newsletter. I’m hearing dreadful accounts from patients and their families, and doctors and nurses.
They are sick and tired, literally, of the constant upheaval; some of them feel the government has created a permanent culture of crisis in Alberta’s health care system. One reason spending on health care has increased in recent years is that we are repairing the damage done by the disastrous cuts of the 1990s. Many feel that just as we were starting to recover, we are headed back there again.
So what can you do? Tell the Premier and the Minister of Health not to repeat the disastrous cuts of the 1990s. Tell them you expect better. And tell them you are watching closely and will hold them to account. Some day your life could depend on it.
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Hi everyone,
I have received so many concerns about health care this summer that for the first time ever I am publishing a special edition newsletter, entirely on one subject-- health care.
It is very clear that once again the government is sending Alberta's health care system into turmoil, and I think it really depends on people like you speaking out to friends and neighbours, contacting the Premier's office, writing to the newspapers, and whatever other things you can do to express your concerns. My biggest concern, as I say in the cover letter of the newsletter, is that we have had 16 years of quick fixes for health care, when what we need is some long-term stability.
A paper copy of the newsletter has been mailed to every home in Edmonton-Riverview. I'm [enclosing] the electronic version in case you missed the paper one, or in case you want to send it further afield.
I hope you had a great summer.
Kevin Taft, MLA
Edmonton-Riverview
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