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Smith is on a roll with these major announcements to her supporters.

Drayton Valley is like the new provincial capital - the centre of government business where policy is announced to a room full of supporters.

This one is about an Alberta police agency.

edmontonjournal.com

Smith tells supporters new provincial police agency coming 'under the sheriffs'

An Alberta police agency will take on an increasing number of duties the province has assigned to its sheriffs, according to Premier Smith.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com
 
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kcantor said:
Sooo…

Hands up if you - or even if anyone you know - voted for this sh!t.
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Well I didn't vote for it, mostly because I think party based democracy is a meme, but I did likely indirectly give them the idea for the policy.

Care to explain what part of introducing some competitive pressure to improve efficiency in healthcare is bad thing?
 
TAS said:
Smith is on a roll with these major announcements to her supporters.

Drayton Valley is like the new provincial capital - the centre of government business where policy is announced to a room full of supporters.

This one is about an Alberta police agency.

edmontonjournal.com

Smith tells supporters new provincial police agency coming 'under the sheriffs'

An Alberta police agency will take on an increasing number of duties the province has assigned to its sheriffs, according to Premier Smith.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com
Click to expand...
Lol... Yeah that one too. What's the problem?
 
HappyJazzz said:
Lol... Yeah that one too. What's the problem?
Click to expand...

The public is learning more about these two initiatives from a reporter who attended a townhall meeting over a week ago on Aug. 17. That's a very poor way to announce policy directives.

The UCP and Premier Smith has established a poor relationship with with many hospital workers (doctors, nurses, support) as well as other key health stakeholders. Is this approach of fear and threats going to improve that relationship and increase the #of doctors we have? I can't imagine being in an environment like that.
We have troubling staffing issues. A man recently died several months after his cancer diagnosis and had never even seen an oncologist due to shortages.
Even Covenant Health has had to close departments in some of its hospitals for periods of time due to staffing issues.

I agree with you that I don't love party democracy in many respects and I find this particular government very heavily ideologically based in its decisions and is happy to hide info that is not supportive of its initiatives- such as the results of public survey on CPP, for one. They completely ignored the majority will of Edmonton and Calgary on municipal political parties.

This government just doesn't work well with so many of its partners in the province and even groups like the
Alberta Rural Munipalities Association, where their bread and butter support is, have outlined various concerns from inadequate funding, policing and well clean ups etc.

In terms of Danielle Smith, I don't trust or believe her many times. She distorts facts. Great communicator though.
 
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This is a problem of having a government being led or pushed by the extremes of its own party. They start to pursue things most people don't want just to satisfy their own members.
 
HappyJazzz said:
Well I didn't vote for it, mostly because I think party based democracy is a meme, but I did likely indirectly give them the idea for the policy.

Care to explain what part of introducing some competitive pressure to improve efficiency in healthcare is bad thing?
Click to expand...
I suppose it depends on your priorities but public healthcare isn't necessarily best served by "improved efficiency" as much as by the delivery of quality health care. If improved efficiency doesn't result in the latter - or indeed compromised delivery of the latter - then it's foolishness personified.

If the goal is the provision of quality health care, perhaps less "introducing fear" and more listening to doctors and nurses and other health care providers is a better path? At this point in time, 650,000 Albertans don't even have a GP - the earliest and most efficient point in delivering quality health care. That's only going to get worse as Alberta experiences national and internation migration numbers at the fastest rate the province has ever had and none of them bring their own doctors or nursed or emergency rooms or hospitals with them...
 
HappyJazzz said:
Well I didn't vote for it, mostly because I think party based democracy is a meme, but I did likely indirectly give them the idea for the policy.

Care to explain what part of introducing some competitive pressure to improve efficiency in healthcare is bad thing?
Click to expand...
Public healthcare is not a business and it takes a lack of undertstanding of the purpose of public services to think that they should be run as such.

There is efficiency to be gained, but there are means of achieving that within the existing structures.

This government has made it clear that they favour private healthcare so the above points are moot. Efficiency can only be judged if service levels are equal and the cost to consumers is unchanged and since private healthcare is motivated by profit over service, any improvement in the latter is a direct result in an increase of the former.
 
TAS said:
This also nicely outlines some of the concerns with Smith's recent actions on health care and police.

calgaryherald.com

Braid: Private companies running hospitals? All part of Smith campaign to soothe restless UCP base

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pitches private hospital management to her UCP's restless base in advance of leadership review.
calgaryherald.com calgaryherald.com
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From the article:
Covenant is adept at shifting overflow to the two AHS hospitals, the University and Royal Alexandra. That increases pressure on their ERs from Edmontonians and northern rural transfers.

“In the only place where there’s already two hospital managers and a kind of competition, the results are actually worse,” says Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association.

Efficiency!
 
There are absolutely efficiencies to be gained in healthcare. @kcantor noted one (primary healthcare access) and the other is expanding long term care capacity to free up the extensive number of hospital beds occupied by elderly patients waiting for transfer. There are bureaucratic structures that could be refined as well, but for an organization that employs ~100,000 professionals, there's going to be substantial administrative overhead to keep it all moving in the same direction.

Otherwise, hospital healthcare ironically does work unbelievably efficient--our hospitals have been running at over 100% capacity in near perpetuity, average bed vacancy time for med/surg units is probably <100 mins, most units run the most bare minimum nurse-patient ratios and attendings manage three digit counts of patients. Hospital healthcare is held together by front line staff who work their freakin' arses off... seriously, I'd rather go work on a drilling rig in Wabasca before I'd work a hospital shift as a nurse.
 
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