Communities in a region will work together to reduce costs
EDMONTON — Rural residents will have a greater say in how their health care works, a new rural health care review has promised.
Alberta health minister Stephen Mandel, who released the report March 18 during the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties convention, promised to return more control of health care to rural regions.
“We hope this will push decision-making down to the local level,” said Mandel.
“We understand how important health care is to Albertans, including small and rural communities.”
The report makes 56 recommendations on how to improve health-care service in rural Alberta.
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Alberta Health Services will establish eight to 10 operational districts, which are designed to allow rural areas more say in their health care.
The new districts will take effect July 1.
Alberta used to have health-care districts, but they were disbanded in favour of the centralized health-care model.
Mandel said the new operational districts would be different than the old health regions, which fought with each other for services.
“These district will be responsible for allocating the budget, deal with health care directly, not capital investments. It will really be about delivering health care.”
Other recommendations include expanding telehealth programs to all rural health facilities and expanding physician assistant and nurse practitioners programs.
Bonnie Sansregret, a member of the review committee, said she is optimistic that decentralization and the addition of advisory councils will help rural voices be heard.
“Any time you get the community involved, you have more representation from the community, and they know what that community needs. You can’t be doing things from afar,” said Sansregret.
“Sometimes our voice wasn’t heard. Now I think our voice will be heard in all rural Alberta. That was the goal of the review.”
Ron Govenlock of Whitecourt, Alta., said he is pleased with the return to at least partial decentralization of health care. He hopes more local input will lead to more local, rural services.
“What we are really concerned about is the need to have special diagnostic services available for local communities. The people in our municipality have to travel two hours for special tests. We are concerned rural municipalities have access to the same kind of services that urban city services are getting,” said Govenlock.
“There is no question the centralization versus decentralization is an issue and local people need to have a voice of where those services are provided. There comes with that the risk there may be duplication and costs associated with providing more locally. Providing those services may trump the associated costs to provide the services.”
However, Mandel said the goal of the decentralization is to reduce expenses by having communities within the region working together.
A lump sum of money will be given to each district, and it will be expected to make the best use of all the facilities in the region, including small hospitals and primary care networks.
“The budget will be allocated to each district based on program needs,” said Mandel.
As well, changes will be made to ambulance services.
Rural ambulances that bring patients to larger centres will no longer be allowed to be used by urban hospitals to shuttle patients within the city. Instead, those ambulances will return to their home base.
