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Alberta

Free hotel room and food for up to 14 days for Albertans who can not isolate or quarantine at home

Published

4 years ago

4 minute read

From the Province of Alberta

All Albertans are now eligible to receive self-isolation supports to help limit the spread of COVID-19.

Prior to this expansion, only Albertans in Edmonton and Calgary were eligible for the $625 payment when they completed self-isolating in their assigned hotel.

Now, Albertans across the province – including First Nations individuals living both on and off reserve and people living on Metis Settlements who cannot isolate safely in their own home – are eligible.

Upon referral by Alberta Health Services, Albertans who must isolate or quarantine and cannot do so safely at home are eligible for a free-of-charge hotel room stay of up to 14 days, complete with culturally appropriate food and other supports.

COVID Care Teams will continue to provide on-the-ground supports and interventions to limit the spread of the virus. Supports include care packages with masks, sanitizers and information translated in multiple languages. Safe transportation to COVID-19 assessment and testing facilities is also available.

“Today’s expansion builds on the effective outreach efforts of COVID Care Teams. No matter what they earn, what community they live in or what language they speak, all Albertans should be able to isolate safely to protect themselves, their families and their neighbours from COVID-19. Reducing the spread means we can get Alberta’s economy back on track while we protect both lives and livelihoods.”

Ric McIver, Minister of Municipal Affairs

“Expanding the isolation supports to include people on First Nations and Metis Settlements is the right thing to do. Everyone should have the chance to isolate safely while having the financial support to cover expenses while they recover.”

Rick Wilson, Minister of Indigenous Relations

“Our community needs this kind of support to stop the spread of COVID. Having come from an area that has been particularly hard hit, we are grateful to the province for providing a means for our residents to access a place to isolate safely. Knowing they will be able to cover their bills when sick will make a world of difference for the Samson Cree Nation and all other Indigenous communities.”

Chief Vernon Saddleback, Samson Cree Nation

Alberta’s government is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by protecting lives and livelihoods with precise measures to bend the curve, sustain small businesses and protect Alberta’s health-care system.

Quick facts

  • The COVID Care Team program launched in December 2020 as an integrated way to reach communities with particularly high levels of COVID-19 spread.
  • The Government of Alberta also developed an outreach campaign to communicate important public health information directly to Albertans who may have English language barriers through expanded access to translated materials and other supports.
    • Messages are being delivered in 10 languages through radio, television and print advertising, as well as through various social media channels and web platforms.
  • Since the launch of the COVID Care Teams and outreach campaign on Dec. 15, more than 850 Albertans have accessed hotel accommodations for self-isolation purposes.
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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Alberta

Alberta takes big step towards shorter wait times and higher quality health care

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.

To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.

Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.

Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.

The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.

This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.

In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.

The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.

Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.

While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.

Nadeem Esmail

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Alberta’s embrace of activity-based funding is great news for patients

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Montreal Economic Institute

Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.

“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”

Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.

Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.

An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.

Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.

In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.

“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”

The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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