{"id":284988,"date":"2025-11-15T15:58:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T15:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284988\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T15:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T15:58:15","slug":"alberta-expands-use-of-private-surgical-centres-in-bid-to-shorten-procedure-wait-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284988\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta expands use of private surgical centres in bid to shorten procedure wait-lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, left, and Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones in Calgary on Friday.Jeff McIntosh\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith<\/a> is expanding the province\u2019s use of private surgical centres to perform thousands of procedures, with the goal of increasing operating-room capacity and shortening wait-lists. <\/p>\n

Ms. Smith announced Friday her government\u2019s plan to improve access to acute care, which will include constructing three buildings, each adjoined to hospitals in Calgary and Edmonton. Together, the buildings will hold more than 1,000 new hospital beds. They will be added to Grey Nuns and Misericordia Community hospitals in Edmonton and South Health Campus hospital in Calgary.<\/p>\n

Critics said the announcement was an example of the government doubling down on private surgeries, and that it doesn\u2019t address a shortage of health care workers in Alberta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Picard: The real health care wait-time scandal? Political meddling<\/a><\/p>\n

Ms. Smith\u2019s government has been under fire since early this year over deals for private surgical facilities, when The Globe and Mail first reported allegations \u2013 now contained in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit \u2013 of government interference into health contracts. The former chief executive of Alberta Health Services, Athana Mentzelopoulos, alleges she faced political pressure to sign inflated contracts for certain facilities. The government alleges she was fired for incompetence.<\/p>\n

None of the allegations have been tested in court.<\/p>\n

Last month, an independent review by retired Manitoba judge Raymond Wyant found AHS didn\u2019t follow its own policies<\/a> for opening a private surgical clinic in Edmonton. Though Mr. Wyant did not find evidence of political interference, he did not interview elected officials in his investigation and said his conclusions came with limitations, partly because he didn\u2019t have the power to subpoena or hear testimony under oath.<\/p>\n

Ms. Smith did not say which private surgical centres, formally known as chartered surgical facilities, will be contracted as part of the plan. CSFs are privately owned facilities where surgeons perform operations that are paid for by the public health care system.<\/p>\n

CSFs have increased the number of surgeries they can perform annually since 2019, Ms. Smith told reporters Friday, up to 65,000 surgeries per year from 40,000. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went out and asked not only our public hospital providers, but also surgical centres, \u2018Do you have room to do more?\u2019 Their answer was overwhelmingly yes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Smith\u2019s government has argued private facilities add capacity and can help reduce wait times, and critics say while they can play a role in surgical care, they risk pulling resources away from the public system. A report published in March by the Parkland Institute found private surgical facilities in Alberta were starving the public system of staff and funding<\/a> to perform priority procedures.<\/p>\n

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As of September, there were more than 83,000 Albertans waiting for surgeries \u2013 the highest number recorded since January, 2022, according to the Alberta Surgical Initiative<\/a> dashboard. That number has been rising steadily since April, 2023, when more than 71,500 residents were waiting for surgery.<\/p>\n

The province did not say how it intends to staff the new spaces. Matt Jones, Alberta\u2019s Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, said the province has recruited more than 1,000 registered and licensed nurses and 600 new physicians over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the value proposition here is significant,\u201d Mr. Jones said. He also foreshadowed two \u201cvery significant\u201d health care commitments to be announced before the end of November. Twelve new psychiatric beds were included in Friday\u2019s announcement. <\/p>\n

The province said the plan to increase access to acute care is expected to cost $82.5-million, but did not provide a breakdown of the costs, nor how much it will need to spend to staff the new spaces. It also did not outline a timeline for the plan\u2019s rollout.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hoffman, an Opposition health critic from the Alberta NDP, criticized the government for expanding on a strategy \u201cthat\u2019s already under all these investigations and allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think having somebody to blame for things not being good enough in public health care, and a road map to be able to further privatization is her goal,\u201d Ms. Hoffman said of Ms. Smith. <\/p>\n

Friends of Medicare, a public health care advocacy group, in a statement said the announcement was \u201ccover\u201d for the province to spend more on private surgical contracts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, left, and Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,84,392,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-284988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}