The Wildrose Party will be pushing the provincial government to make major improvements to health care when the legislature resumes, according to Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith.
Smith made that vow during a recent visit to Olds.
She said Premier Jim Prentice and Health Minister Stephen Mandel don't seem to understand what the problem is. She added the problem has been created during decades of complacent PC government.
“They have centralized decision-making to a point where they are stripping resources and knowledge out of the local communities and decision-making power out of local communities. That has led to the problems that we have today,” Smith said.
She said one part of the solution is to spend more money on home care, the program that enables people to receive health care while remaining in their own homes.
“We've got to make sure that we allow for resources so that seniors can age in places as long as possible. We know that's what seniors want, but we haven't heard that there's enough investment in home care,” she said.
She said another part of the solution is to invest more cash in long-term care.
“As seniors continue to age longer, we're going to see more instances of Alzheimer's and dementia, which require 24-hour nursing care beds. And the government has gone (in) the opposite direction. Rather than opening more, they've been closing them down,” she said.
Smith said because of the lack of spending in those two areas, hospitals are clogged with people who would be more appropriately dealt with in other facilities.
“It's creating difficulties across the entire system,” she said. “We see it because we're not able to reduce the number of waiting lists for acute procedures. Plus we also see a huge amount of wait in all of our emergency rooms.”
She said another part of the solution is to go back to a system that used to exist in Alberta – transition-care beds.
Smith said those beds provided patients with a place to stay and be cared for while waiting for a long-term bed to be made available.
“I've seen nothing from the announcements of either the premier or the new health minister that they understand that these are key aspects that we have to resolve if we're going to be able to clear up the bottlenecks in our hospital system,” she said.
Lastly, she said, the province needs to attract more doctors to rural communities “so that everybody has a family doctor.”
Smith said that not only means recruiting the doctors themselves, but providing facilities that will attract them, and give them a reason to stay there.
“We have not done a good enough job of being able to attract and keep talent in our communities,” she said. “Part of being able to attract the best talent is ensuring that we've got full-service hospitals in a lot more rural communities, so that they become a place where doctors can practise the full scope of their medical practice.
“This is why we, as the Opposition, are going to continue to press on them, once we return to the legislature.”
