Alberta Prime Minister Danielle Smith outlined her healthcare priorities in her letter of mandate to the Minister in charge of the dossier, Adriana LaGrange.

Among other things, Danielle Smith wants her minister to reform Alberta Health Services (AHS) to bring decision-making closer to the front lines. The decentralization ofAHS is a longstanding idea of ​​the Prime Minister, who put it forward in the run for the leadership of the United Conservative Party last summer.

The Minister of Health says that the mandate ofAHS is too broad and that not all resources are used in the most efficient way.

Originally [AHS] It was supposed to be just hospital care, but today it’s frontline care, long-term care and support, says Adriana LaGrange. It is also a service provider and also develops public policies. All of these areas were outside of the originally intended scope.

However, she says that no specific decision has been made in this case.

New Democratic Party (NDP) health critic David Shepherd has criticized the announced restructuring. He argues that Danielle Smith has not demonstrated the ability to understand, much less transform, a system as complex as health.

It’s a little ridiculous that the Prime Minister sacked the entire board AHS Use a single admin who will only respond when she tells us she wants to support more regional decision-making.

A month after taking office, in November 2022, Danielle Smith dissolved the Alberta Health Services Board of Directors and appointed Dr. John Cowell as interim administrator.

The same applies to the organization Friends of Medicare. Angering Alberta Health and Health Services by talking about restructuring is not what our public health system needs right nowsaid its general manager Chris Gallaway in a press release.

In the letter, Danielle Smith also urges her minister to reduce turnaround times at the province’s medical laboratories, which have skyrocketed since they were privatized last December. In some areas, including Calgary, patients must wait several weeks to receive routine test results.

For Chris Gallaway, these delays are proof that privatization is not the way forward for Alberta’s healthcare system: We must stop prioritizing the profits of for-profit corporations and invest the money we spend on health in strengthening the public health system.

DynaLIFE, the company responsible for these labs, refused to answer questions from Radio-Canada.

Women’s Health and Rural Care

In the mandate letter, the prime minister also reaffirmed a number of campaign promises. She wants to develop a $10 million provincial midwifery strategy and set up screening tests for newborns for five new diseases.

There is also talk of hiring more gynecologists in rural areas, in Lethbridge and Fort McMurray.

Danielle Smith wants to review workforce retention policies in rural health centers and simplify recognition of qualifications for health-trained immigrants.

In the area of ​​training, the Prime Minister wants to open up further study places in the health sector, for example medicine and nursing.

Before the election, the government had already announced 120 new places in the province’s medical programs shared by the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.