Former top Alberta doctor warns Premier Smith against AHS overhaul

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A former chief medical officer of health has said Premier Danielle Smith could be on a dangerous path by repeating that her « views are set » on changes to Alberta Health Services (AHS).

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Smith has repeatedly laid health care issues at the feet of AHS management in recent days, saying she intends to pursue rapid restructuring after what she called « bad decisions » to ‘AHS on ‘bad advice’ from Chief Medical Officer Dr Deena Hinshaw.

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While Smith kept Health Minister Jason Copping in his post after last week’s cabinet reshuffle, she said she intended to seek new public health advisers, replacing Hinshaw and removing the AHS Board of Directors.

“We were told we had to rely on the experts, and they let us down. And so we are going to hold accountable the people who caused us to fail,” Smith told reporters at the UCP AGM on Saturday. She said she and Copping will « align perfectly on what the immediate changes need to be. »

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Dr. James Talbot, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health and Alberta’s chief medical officer of health from 2012 to 2015, said he was troubled by Smith’s comments after the stress without precedent that COVID-19 has had on health systems around the world.

To date, nearly 5,000 Albertans have died from COVID-19, and Talbot said the toll would have been much worse without action to protect public health during the many waves of the disease. At the height of the fourth wave in the fall of 2021, there were over 1,000 people hospitalized with COVID and 15,000 surgeries had to be canceled to accommodate sick people who needed care.

“It was only through the continued work of people like Alberta Health Services that they were able to expand critical care capacity to the point where Albertans were reasonably sure that if they got sick they would would have a hospital bed and an intensive care bed,” he said.

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« And their reward for leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the system has expanded to be able to handle it is to be told by the Prime Minister that the AHS executive is somehow responsible for this? »

Talbot said it’s helpful to assess the province’s response to the pandemic and make changes to better prepare for the next one, but what Smith suggests won’t.

« You don’t jettison the captain who brought the ship through the storm into harbor safely. You don’t throw them overboard after the storm passes.

Smith said the change was necessary because bad decisions at AHS have “manufactured” issues like staffing shortages and the current crisis in EMS capacity, where people wait for help in an emergency or Paramedics are stuck in a hospital with no room to discharge more patients.

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She suggested that the structural change could help attract more healthcare workers who have burned out to return to work, with better guarantees on working conditions.

Talbot said he would more likely do the opposite, with recruitment a problem for health systems across the country.

« If you’re a nurse approaching retirement age, you still have five years left, but you’re pretty drained from the last three years of giving it your all…and you see that being debated in public, in which the prime minister says the health system has failed, why would you keep gutting it?”

AHS is also in the process of recruiting a new president and chief executive after former chief Dr. Verna Yiu was ousted in April.

« I don’t see how executives who have the skills, knowledge, attitudes and values ​​to run something as complex as Alberta Health Services would want to come to a place like Alberta where they can be criticized and fired in public. “, said Talbot.

Leaders of four unions representing Alberta health care workers are expected to hold a joint press conference on Monday to discuss solutions to the health care ‘crisis’ and ‘urge’ a meeting with the health minister .

masmith@postmedia.com

@meksmith