Cracks forming in Alberta Health Services?

With the resignation of Ken Hughes, chair of Alberta Health Services Board, one must wonder if this will lead to an exodus of other Alberta Health Services board members or executives. It is unclear if this is a case of jumping from a sinking ship or just a move towards political leadership for Mr Hughes.

One observation is that Ken Hughes, as well as the Progressive Conservative leadership had no problem applauding Hughes' leadership for saving $660 million of administrative savings towards "patient care". But the devil's advocate might say that the ousted Dr Stephen Duckett is actually the one that made the hard decisions to cut despite the Superboard and Health Minister continually overturning his decisions because of political pressure. Were the savings (or re-investment of funds) made with the help of Ken Hughes 'leadership' or despite the indecision of the superboard.

This blog is not intended to over simplify or place blame, but rather give another perspective on the current discussions of AHS and who is responsible (good or bad). It is this writer's prediction that Alberta Health Services will collapse in one of two ways; denial of the problem leading eventual collapse of the AHS system, or a quiet retraction from the initial fully centralized philosophy conjured by past leadership. Likely the best case, and perhaps the most likely scenario, is that leadership will see the cracks forming and start to distance themselves from the original Alberta Health Services centralization.

Final thoughts about Alberta Health Services
There are certainly advantages to a centralized province wide health organization, especially in terms of Corporate Services like IT Services, HelpDesk, communications, and uh maybe letterhead. Guess what, it already exists as Alberta Health and Wellness... But wait that is different because it is directly controlled by the Health Minister and government oversight, but wait so is Alberta Health Services. The more AHS pushed to become centralized the more politically driven and redundant it became vs AH&W.

The idea of sucking money from every community and then trying to redistribute it fairly with a province wide bureaucratic. The idea is cool, everyone should get the same care no matter where in Alberta they are... But that just isn't how life works folks, if you live by a highway there is traffic noise, if you live in the boonies it takes longer to get to the hospital, and if you live in a crowded city with only public healthcare then you are going to wait in line.

Albertans check out Alberta Directory