Alberta
Join us as we welcome the Class of 2020
Join us as we welcome the Class of 2020.
We are excited to announce that tickets for the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame 2020 Induction Banquet are now on sale.
Come join us on Friday, May 29, 2020, at the Cambridge Red Deer Hotel and Conference Centre as we celebrate Alberta’s great athletes, sport builders, pioneers, and media personnel with hundreds of people from across the province, the west, and the country.
Cocktails will start at 5:00 p.m., with the dinner and program starting at 6:00 p.m.
Tickets are:
- $85 for Honoured Members;
- $125 for Guests of Honoured Members;
- $150 for General Admission; and,
- $1,200 for a Table of Eight
Tickets can be purchased by calling (403) 341-8614, by visiting https://www.albertasportshall.ca/2020-induction-banquet and filling out a registration form, or by visiting the event page on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/alberta-sports-hall-of-fame-induction-banquet-tickets-94867738961?aff=ebdssbeac.
The newest athletes joining the Hall of Fame are:
- Deidra Dionne (Athlete, Freestyle Skiing): Bronze medalist in women’s aerials at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
- Chris Phillips (Athlete, Hockey): A stay-at-home defenceman and the longest-serving player in Ottawa Senators franchise history.
- Kelly Sutherland (Athlete, Chuckwagon Racing): Twelve-time Calgary Stampede Rangeland Derby Championships, and seven Calgary Stampede Aggregate titles.
- Michael Robertson (Athlete, Snowboardcross): Silver medalist at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
This year’s builders include:
- Jan Ullmark (Builder, Figure Skating): Jan is an elite coach whose skills have made an indelible mark on the sport of figure skating in Canada.
- Terry Morris (Builder, Curling): Terry has been active in the promotion and development of the sport of curling in Alberta and across the nation for the better part of four decades.
- Ken Babey (Builder, Hockey): In his nearly three decades behind the bench of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) Trojans men’s hockey team, Ken Babey guided the team to unparalleled success.
- Derek Douglas (Builder, Soccer): One of the first soccer referees from Alberta to attain the position of FIFA International Referee in 1986, Derek has also been instrumental in growing the game in Sherwood Park, Edmonton and throughout the province.
This year’s Alberta Sports Hall of Fame Award winners are:
- Nancy Southern & Ian Allison (Bell Memorial Award): As the team who pioneered equestrian sports broadcasting in Alberta, they are the first duo to be awarded the Bell Memorial Award.
- John Currie (Achievement Award): As president of the 1983 Western Canada Summer Games, John led the development and funding of the game’s flagship facility – the Repsol Sport Centre.
- Stan Wakelyn (Pioneer Award, Soccer): In 1922, Calgary Hillhurst FC won the Dominion of Canada Football Championship, with Stan, a centre forward, as team captain.
- Dennis Kadatz (Legacy Award): At 22, Dennis guided the Edmonton Huskies Junior Football Team to three consecutive Canadian Championships in 1962 and 1963. In 1964, Dennis became head coach of the University of Calgary’s fledgeling football program.
Read more here.
Deirdra Dionne one of 14 to be inducted to Alberta Sports Hall of Fame
From the Fraser Institute
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
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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