Hospital-based decision making fears of privatization, hope for capacity

The declaration of its intentions to restore local decision making for public health facilities of Alberta Premier is highlighting a philosophical division of how to manage the best managed health budget of the province.

Premier Daniel Smith published A video online On Tuesday, decisions about health care workers or replacing hospital furniture are with individual health centers, not the manager of Alberta Health Services (AHS) managers.

Smith said in the video, “Soon, each feature will be a strong leadership team supporting our sites, which is responsible for solving problems without hiring, managing resources and sending every request to the vortex.”

This change is part of a large reorganization of health care in the province, in which the government has broken the monitoring of care in four new agencies and snatched the AHS of decision -making power.

On Tuesday afternoon, a government news release said that this change will take place with a provincial change in “activity -based funding” starting next year.

Instead of allocating global annual budget, the government will fund some facilities based on safety measures as well as safety measures as well as the number of procedures.

Although the premiere said that the patient’s care in the shift will move rapidly, health policy experts say they have questions about how it will work, and infection has warned the infection that the door opens for private, profit for profitable companies running public hospitals.

Emeritus John Church, Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, said, “They are trying to create some types of markets -a competitive market to provide acute care services, and … certainly different providers compete with each other.”

The church, who has written books on the construction of Alberta Health Services and the development of health administration in the province, says that the declaration can make a change for the way Alberta’s health system is run before the cooperation in the health areas, and then a single healthcare provider.

In an interview on Tuesday, the church said that the government went away from local hospital control in the 1990s as facilities were often coming out of money and returning to the government to demand more. The fragmented system was time -consuming and expensive, he said.

The church stated that the province can try to control the costs that can either contract personal health facilities or contract private operators to run them, provide a certain contract cost and give operators flexibility to run them to run them.

He said that the control of important public services for the private sector is risky. The church pointed to a private surgical center in Calgary, which faced bankruptcy in 2010, pounced to prevent the province from cancellation of mass cancellation.

In 2023, the Alberta government reversed a rapid course when the private operator was on the verge of dynastic insolvency on privatizing lab services.

More efficiency or more risk?

Crystal Vitrewongel, director of research at an independent public policy think tank, is more hopeful about the ability to make site-based decision making in combination with activity-based funding.

“I think we are going to see some real changes,” he said on Wednesday. “I am very excited about the fact that these two things are happening together.”

Mei believes that the competition encourages adaptability and innovation, Vitverongel said.

He pointed Health system in Quebec and Australia Using activity-based funding that reduced the waiting time for diagnostic imaging and colonoscopy, and reduced some process costs.

Professor of Calgary Medicine and Health Economics, Dr. Braden Men’s University is more suspicious. The former senior AHS administrator said that Alberta went away from the local hospital control as the facilities were competing for a certain number of health professionals working in the province, which increased the cost.

Manans said that there was also incompatibility in medical treatment throughout the province, which meant that all patients were not getting the best evidence-based care.

He said that despite the premiere statements, there was the ability to decide to hire in local hospitals – until the government abandoned health expenses and AHS was forced to centrally approve the decisions that are on all work to control the cost.

Although competition and free markets can generate cheap and better laptop computers, it does not make better medicine, Manas said.

“It is different in healthcare, where you have to provide coverage for everyone and you are not paying from your pocket, you are paying from taxpayers funds,” he said. “We need to ensure that everyone gets care.”

He said that personalized, competitive care in the US is the most expensive with the most expensive patient results in the world, he said.

“This is not the system that we should try to follow,” he said.

What does local control mean?

Steven Lewis, a health policy advisor and assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in BC, says it is not clear from the government’s announcement what the new decision -making authority will have a hospital.

Louis said, “It is always attractive to say that you are going to have more power now.”

He said that the alleged autonomy would be tested when a feature leader wants to add or eliminate a program, which the oversight body, intense care Alberta, would not have chosen to do, he said.

Lewis questioned whether health facilities will now hire the CEO, or there are new local boards to make decisions.

“It is like reading the chiclady,” he said about the lack of details.

In an email of Wednesday, Press Secretary to the Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister, Kyle Warner said that there is no plan to add administrator positions on the hospital sites – but he did not answer questions about the scope of decision -making power of local boards or facilities.

Warner said that the hospital-based leadership would be pilot on the same site to start, but the government has not yet chosen.

He said that the government has no plans to lease or sell AHS facilities to private operators.

Warner wrote, “Private hospitals are illegal to operate more for themselves in Alberta, and the government of Alberta has no plans to change it.”

“Any Alberton will never pay with pockets to the pockets such as a doctor or receiving hospital care – full stop.”