By-election an opportunity to send a message on public health care
By Lethbridge Herald on November 28, 2024.
Chris Gallaway
FRIENDS OF MEDICARE
The Lethbridge-West by-election has put a political and media spotlight on Southern Alberta’s largest city.
It is a race that includes well-known local candidates from both the governing and opposition parties, making it an important opportunity for residents to call on all candidates and political parties for solutions to address what is happening with their public health care in southern Alberta.
Because what I’ve heard in Lethbridge is widespread concern about accessing the health care folks need when they need it. Concerns about a lack of family doctors taking new patients, about reduced emergency room capacity at the Chinook Regional Hospital, about closed emergency rooms in nearby communities, about struggles in accessing testing, surgeries, reproductive care, cancer care and other crucial services in the community in a timely matter.
And I’m sure that’s what candidates are hearing as well. Folks in Lethbridge are demanding solutions to access to the public health care they need.
Instead, they’re getting a chaotic restructuring plan that’s doing nothing to improve services or address the workforce issues in our health care system. Short-staffing is impacting the system across the province, but those impacts are always felt more strongly in rural and smaller urban centres.
The government’s ongoing attacks on doctors and health care workers have had very real negative consequences for Lethbridge patients.
For years there has been a lack of family physicians accepting new patients in the city. The government’s decision to break their promise to implement a new physician compensation model this fall has meant even more high-profile announcements from family doctors in Lethbridge who are now packing up and moving to B.C. A totally preventable scenario!
This lack of family doctors in the region is sending folks into the emergency room to seek care, creating added pressures there. But the same lack of doctors led to reduced physician staffing levels in the Chinook Regional Hospital emergency room all summer, meaning patients were left waiting longer for care there as well. This in one of the largest cities in Alberta!
But it’s not just Lethbridge.
Emergency departments in nearby Milk River, Pincher Creek and Ford Macleod have all experienced repeated, temporary closures due to short staffing. These closures send more and more folks into Lethbridge seeking care.
And it’s also not just doctors and emergency departments. A lack of skilled health care professionals is causing impacts throughout the system.
It is clear our public health care system is in a staffing crisis. A continuation of the government’s agenda of destruction and aggressive privatization will not fix things. If anything, continued privatization will further weaken the services available to folks in the Lethbridge and southern Alberta. Thus, creating further staffing issues and a system where only those with financial means to pay can access the care they need.
We need to change course with immediate action to deal with widespread short-staffing, worker burnout, and facility closures. This is an urgent situation. We should be seeing an urgent response from our government. An urgent response that includes a workforce plan to retain the health care workers we currently have, recruit new ones into the system and train those we need for the years ahead.
We are calling on all parties to present a concrete plan for how they will protect and strengthen the public health care system in southern Alberta to Lethbridge-West voters during the by-election.
This by-election won’t change who forms the government in Edmonton. But it is an opportunity for Lethbridge voters to send a strong message. They can make it clear that Albertans support public health care and demand action to rebuild it from our political leaders.
Chris Gallaway is the executive director at Friends of Medicare.
18-17
Not sure if you have followed the news regarding the rest of Canada, but if you had, you would have noticed that healthcare shortages are Canada wide, not just in Alberta,
BC is an NDP province and shares in the shortages and if you had watched the Nova Scotia Election recently, you would have seen they share in this crisis, but elected the Progressive Conservatives by a majority.
There are some other alternatives in Alberta, such as virtual doctors who can prescribe some medications and Rocket Doctor who can be online or phone visit and can prescribe as well as do some minor diagnosis. Many are not aware and these can take some of the pressure off of ER’s who see many needing presciptions for cold and flu.
See the comment below. Next up, education, NDP echo chamber, then the APP just to try to finish it off.