Health

Update… Improved And Expanded Health Care Coming To Sylvan Lake… With Full Announcements

Published

8 years ago

4 minute read

By Sheldon Spackman

It’s been six years in the making. Finally, improved and expanded health care for Sylvan Lake. The province has announced it will create an “Advanced Ambulatory Care Clinic” at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre.

The long-awaited announcement was made at the Sylvan Lake Municipal Government Building Monday afternoon with numerous dignitaries on hand to celebrate. Among them, Alberta’s Health Minister Sarah Hoffman who says the government will provide $2 Million for start-up costs and renovations to the current health facility. She says work will begin this Spring, with the enhanced facility to open early next year. Hoffman says these enhanced health care services will allow the Advanced Ambulatory Care Clinic at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre to offer treatment for urgent care and injuries like stitches and basic fractures up to 16 hours a day / seven days a week. Hoffman says “It’s actually really good timing that when he have a bit of a downturn in the economy, you can stretch your capital money a little bit further and we want to get people working as much as possible, so this is a really good fit time-wise.”

Sylvan Lake Mayor Sean McIntyre says he’s very proud and extremely happy to see this project become a reality, both for the town and surrounding region. He says “It’s been a long road, six years that we’ve been advocating very strongly and persistently for this increase in services and now for that need to be acknowledged and met by the Health Ministry and by Alberta Health Services, we have a lot to celebrate in Sylvan Lake today.” McIntyre also points out how incredible the community has been in supporting this initiative, saying “They’ve been fundraising, they’ve been advocating, writing letters, they’ve been both active and patient with our advocacy efforts and this celebration today really belongs to them!”

Former Sylvan Lake Mayor and current Chair of the Sylvan Lake Urgent Care Committee Susan Samson says it’s almost hard not to cry tears of joy, adding “These services are desperately needed. We’re talking about medical services for non-life threatening injuries and our deal was we were always plugging up the Emergency Rooms at the Red Deer Regional Hospital and at other nearby Emergency Rooms with things that should be treated at home. Things like your child with an ear ache or broken bone or just the simple things. We need to treat them at home and take the pressure off the system and that’s what we’ve got today.” Samson speculates the hours of the new services would likely be roughly 8:00 am to 10:00 pm seven days a week but that’s yet to be decided.

Samson says the first part of the renovations will involve relocating physiotherapy at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre, as they have a large, open space that will be easy to work in. Samson adds the community helped raise $197,000 for this project over the past six years. She says it will be turned over to AHS to purchase equipment and be added to the $2 Million the Province is providing.

(Photo by Lindsay Wiebe)

Related Topics:Sylvan Lake Health Care Town of Sylvan Lake

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Fraser Institute: Time to fix health care in Alberta

Published on December 22, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Bacchus Barua and Tegan Hill

Shortly after Danielle Smith was sworn in as premier, she warned Albertans that it would “be a bit bumpy for the next 90 days” on the road to health-care reform. Now, more than two years into her premiership, the province’s health-care system remains in shambles.

According to a new report, this year patients in Alberta faced a median wait of 38.4 weeks between seeing a general practitioner and receiving medically necessary treatment. That’s more than eight weeks longer than the Canadian average (30.0 weeks) and more than triple the 10.5 weeks Albertans waited in 1993 when the Fraser Institute first published nationwide estimates.

In fact, since Premier Smith took office in 2022, wait times have actually increased 15.3 per cent.

To be fair, Premier Smith has made good on her commitment to expand collaboration with the private sector for the delivery of some public surgeries, and focused spending in critical areas such as emergency services and increased staffing. She also divided Alberta Health Services, arguing it currently operates as a monopoly and monopolies don’t face the consequences when delivering poor service.

While the impact of these reforms remain largely unknown, one thing is clear: the province requires immediate and bold health-care reforms based on proven lessons from other countries (e.g. Australia and the Netherlands) and other provinces (e.g. Saskatchewan and Quebec).

These reforms include a rapid expansion of contracts with private clinics to deliver more publicly funded services. The premier should also consider a central referral system to connect patients to physicians with the shortest wait time in their area in public or private clinics (while patients retain the right to wait longer for the physician of their choice). This could be integrated into the province’s Connect Care system for electronic patient records.

Saskatchewan did just this in the early 2010s and moved from the longest wait times in Canada to the second shortest in just four years. (Since then, wait times have crept back up with little to no expansion in the contracts with private clinics, which was so successful in the past. This highlights a key lesson for Alberta—these reforms are only a first step.)

Premier Smith should also change the way hospitals are paid to encourage more care and a more patient-focused approach. Why?

Because Alberta still generally follows an outdated approach to hospital funding where hospitals receive a pre-set budget annually. As a result, patients are seen as “costs” that eat into the hospital budget, and hospitals are not financially incentivized to treat more patients or provide more rapid access to care (in fact, doing so drains the budget more rapidly). By contrast, more successful universal health-care countries around the world pay hospitals for the services they provide. In other words, by making treatment the source of hospital revenue, hospitals provide more care more rapidly to patients and improve the quality of services overall. Quebec is already moving in this direction, with other provinces also experimenting.

The promise of a “new day” for health care in Alberta is increasingly looking like a pipe dream, but there’s still time to meaningfully improve health care for Albertans. To finally provide relief for patients and their families, Premier Smith should increase private-sector collaboration, create a central referral system, and change the way hospitals are funded.

Bacchus Barua

Director, Health Policy Studies, Fraser Institute

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Alberta

Province says Alberta family doctors will be the best-paid and most patient-focused in the country

Published on December 19, 2024

Government of Alberta

Dr. Shelley Duggan, president, Alberta Medical Association

New pay model, better access to family doctors

Alberta’s government is implementing a new primary care physician compensation model to improve access to family physicians across the province.

Alberta’s government recognizes that family physicians are fundamental to strengthening the health care system. Unfortunately, too many Albertans do not currently have access to regular primary care from a family physician. This is why, last year, the government entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and committed to developing a new primary care physician compensation model.

Alberta’s government will now be implementing a new compensation model for family doctors to ensure they continue practising in the province and to attract more doctors to choose Alberta, which will also alleviate pressures in other areas of the health care system.

This new model will make Alberta’s family doctors the strongest-paid and most patient-focused in the country.

“Albertans must be able to access a primary care provider. We’ve been working hard with our partners at the Alberta Medical Association to develop a compensation model that will not only support Alberta’s doctors but also improve Albertans’ access to physicians. Ultimately, our deal will make Alberta an even more attractive place to practise family medicine.”

Danielle Smith, Premier

“We have worked with the Alberta Medical Association to address the challenges that primary care physicians are facing. This model will provide the supports physicians need and improve patient access to the care they need.”

Adriana LaGrange, Minister of Health

The new model is structured to encourage physicians to grow the number of patients they care for and encourage full-time practice. Incentives include increases for:

Maintaining high panel numbers (minimum of 500 patients), which will incentivize panel growth and improve access to primary care for patients.
Providing after-hours care to relieve pressure on emergency departments and urgent care centres.
Improving technology to encourage using tools that help streamline work and enhance patient care.
Enhancing team-based care, which will encourage developing integrated teams that may include family physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, dietitians and pharmacists to provide patients with the best care possible.
Adding efficiencies in clinical operations to simplify processes for both patients and health care providers.

As a market and evidence-based model, it recognizes and pays for the critically important work of physicians, including the number of patients seen and patient complexity, as well as time spent providing direct and indirect care.

“Family medicine is the foundation of our health care system. This model recognizes the extensive training, experience and leadership of primary care physicians, and we hope it will help Alberta to attract and retain more family medicine specialists who provide comprehensive care.”

Dr. Shelley Duggan, president, Alberta Medical Association

Additionally, family physicians who are not compensated through the traditional fee-for-service model will now receive higher pay rates under their payment model, known as the alternative relationship plan. This includes those who provide inpatient care in hospitals and rural generalists. Alberta’s government is increasing this to ensure hospital-based family physicians and rural generalists also receive fair, competitive pay that reflects the importance of these roles.

“This new compensation model will make Alberta more attractive for physicians and will make sure more Albertans can have improved access to a primary care provider no matter where they live. It will also help support efforts to strengthen primary care in Alberta as the foundation of the health care system.”

Kim Simmonds, CEO, Primary Care Alberta

“Family physicians have been anxiously awaiting this announcement about the new compensation model. We anticipate this model will allow many primary care physicians to continue to deliver comprehensive, lifelong care to their patients while keeping their community clinics viable.”

Dr. Sarah Bates, president, family medicine section, Alberta Medical Association

Quick facts

Enrolment in the primary care physician compensation model will begin in January with full implementation in spring 2025, provided there are at least 500 physicians enrolled.
The alternative relationship plan rate has not been updated since it was initially calculated in 2002.
The new compensation model for family doctors is the latest primary health care improvement following actions that include:
- A $42-million investment to recruit more health providers and expand essential services.
- A new rural and remote bursary program for family medicine resident physicians.
- Additional funding of $257 million to stabilize primary care delivery and improve access to family physicians.
- Implementing the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Program, which expands the role of nurse practitioners by allowing them to practise comprehensive patient care autonomously, either by operating their own practices or working independently within existing primary care settings.