Alberta
Pharmacist-led clinics improve access to health care: Lessons from Alberta
News release from the Montreal Economic Institute
In Canada, 35 per cent of avoidable emergency room visits could be handled by pharmacists.
Emulating Alberta’s pharmacist-led clinic model could enhance access to primary care and help avoid unnecessary emergency room visits, according to a new study from the Montreal Economic Institute.
“Pharmacists know medication better than anyone else in our health systems,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, senior public policy analyst and Alberta project lead at the MEI. “By unlocking their full potential in prescribing and substituting medications, Alberta’s pharmacist-led clinics have helped avoid tens of thousands of unnecessary emergency room visits.”
Pharmacists in Alberta have the largest prescribing authority in the country, including the ability to prescribe schedule one drugs with special training.
Unlike in Ontario and Manitoba, Alberta pharmacists are authorized to substitute prescribed medications, which can help address issues such as adverse reactions caused by interaction with other treatments.
The study explains that this can help reduce pressure on hospitals, as prescription-related issues account for more than 10 per cent of emergency room visits.
Alberta’s first pharmacist-led clinic, in Lethbridge, sees between 14,600 and 21,900 patients per year since opening in 2022.
It is expected that there will be 103 such clinics active in the province by the end of 2024.
The researcher also links the success of the pharmacist-led clinic model in Alberta to pharmacists’ expanded scope of practice in the province.
Among other things, Alberta pharmacists are able to order and interpret lab tests, unlike their counterparts in British Columbia, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
A 2019 peer-reviewed study found that pharmacists could handle 35 per cent of avoidable emergency room visits in Canada.
“By enabling pharmacists to play a larger role in its health system, Alberta is redirecting minor cases from emergency rooms to more appropriate facilities,” said Wittevrongel. “Just imagine how much faster things could be if pharmacists could take care of 35 per cent of the unnecessary load placed on Canada’s emergency rooms.”
The MEI study is available here.
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The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policy-makers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
From LifeSiteNews
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she will consider the findings of a report she commissioned that called for halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers, admitting there are questions about the “efficacy” of the jab in kids.
“I was pleased to see that we had a broad cross-section of doctors able to look at our previous COVID response, identify processes that were in place, identify things that may have gone wrong,” Smith said [24:50 min mark] while speaking to reporters on January 29.
Smith was responding to a question in response to the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s “COVID Pandemic Response” 269-page final report released last week.
She said she is looking to “identify things that are now under question, like the efficacy of masks and the efficacy of this vaccine in children.”
Smith added that her government is “going to take a look at” the report’s findings and “obviously we’ll, we’ll make some decisions about whether to move forward on any of the recommendations.”
The report was commissioned by Smtih last year, giving the task force a sweeping mandate to investigate her predecessor’s COVID-era mandates and policies.
The task force’s final report was released last week. It recommended halting “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.”
Among the recommendations of the task force was the call to “(f)urther research to establish the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary before widespread use in adults and children,” the establishment of “a website and/or call-in center for the vaccine injured in Alberta” as well as establishing a “mechanism for opting out of federal health policy until provincial due process has been satisfied.”
The report also noted that “(c)hildren and teenagers have a very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission and there is a lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from severe COVID-19.”
Earlier this week, LifeSiteNews reported how Alberta health minister Adriana LaGrange said she will “consider” the findings of a report published last week that recommends immediate halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers.
Smith: Doctors’ right to ‘speak their mind’ must be protected
While answering reporters’ questions on January 29, Smith also said the doctors in the province need to be able to “speak their minds without punishment from their colleges.”
“I think that’s going to be important too, otherwise, politicians only bad decisions,” she noted.
The report touched on how many doctors in Alberta who gave opposing views to the mainstream narrative regarding COVID jabs, masks, and the use of alternatives to treat the virus were wrongly vilified.
Smith mentioned that the point of the report was to find out what went wrong during COVID and to not repeat the same mistakes should there be another pandemic.
LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs that include heart damage and blood clots.
The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.
After becoming premier in late 2022, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.
Under predecessor Jason Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
Alberta Update brings you the latest news on what’s happening in your province. We will hear from Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis and Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services Jason Nixon on this week’s top news: trade and tariffs, securing our borders and efforts to rebuild Jasper.
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