Wildrose Alliance dares to discuss health-care privatization

Kevin Libin:

It’s no coincidence that on Monday her party announced a new website feature inviting Albertans to share their “health-care horror stories” from a system where government planners have, according to the site, “no plan to reform our health-care system into one that is patient-centred, locally managed and sustainable.”

The Health Resource Centre offers a good platform to argue the case. Emerging from a pilot program launched during the more stalwart years of the Klein government aimed at shorten growing waiting lists for certain orthopedic surgeries, it is Alberta’s only privately run, publicly funded overnight stay hospital. A 2009 study by AHS found that the centre — which handles about a third of the city’s hip and knee surgeries — was able to operate and release patients considerably faster and with better outcomes than any other hospital in the province, even adjusting for the more complicated cases (patients with underlying health issues) channeled to larger hospitals.

Were all centres able to match the HRC’s benchmarks for hip and knee replacements, the report found, nearly 12,000 hospital bed days would be freed up every year in the province. The operations are significantly cheaper too, says Tom Saunders, Networc Health’s CEO.

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