New health care corporations go live
By Lethbridge Herald on September 3, 2025.
Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
Three new provincial health corporations became operational on Monday.
They include Cancer Care Alberta as well as the emergency provincial health corporation and Give Life Alberta.
Give Life Alberta was previously known as the Alberta Organ and Tissue Donation program. The corporation is intended to increase awareness about the donations of organs and tissue while also increasing access to transplants.
While thousands of Canadians are on wait lists for transplants, the government says that only one to two per cent of people potentially can become organ donors after their deaths.
One organ donor can save as many as eight lives while a single tissue donor can save as many as 75 people.
Among the organs that can be donated are heart, kidneys, lungs, liver, intestine, pancreas, skin, eyes, bones and tendons and placentas. People can register their intent to donate at GiveLifeAlberta.ca
The province says Give Life Alberta is streamlining processes and “advancing a unified vision for life-saving care.”
Cancer Care Alberta is the entity overseeing cancer treatment and services in Alberta while the emergency services corporation oversees all aspects of that realm including response times, co-ordination of critical services and workforce recruitment/retention.
“We established three organizations to ensure Albertans receive timely, compassionate and personalized care. By aligning prevention with specialized services, we are building a system that supports people through every stage of their health journey,” said Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services Adriana LaGrange in a statement.
In March, the province announced emergency health services were being transferred from Alberta Health Services to Acute Care Alberta. In April it announced that cancer care and organ/tissue donations would be moved from AHS and put under the purview of Acute Care Alberta.
“Integrating cancer care and organ and tissue services under Acute Care Alberta helps ensure Albertans receive the high-quality, co-ordinated care they deserve – delivered when and where they need it most,” LaGrange said at the time.
All three corporations became legal entities on June 1.
In another health-related announcement, the province said on Tuesday that the Northern Alberta Medical Program officially welcomed its first cohort of 30 medical students to the Northwestern Polytechnic in Grande Prairie, the program which is part of $376 million investment to increase the number of graduates from Alberta medical schools. The University of Lethbridge is expected to get its first students next fall.
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Although I am against privatizing healhcare, I can see some areas where it may be alright. Clinics, hospitals, and cancer treatment centers should be under the government, not private!
I watched over 400 private US hospitals in the US fail, going bankrupt during COVID and for me that is one of the best reasons why we should not be privatizing care in those areas. How many communities were left without hospitals in the US from that?!
We need to learn how to run our hospitals better, smarter and find ways to prevent unions from striking, because that is one reason why governments look to privatization.
Staffing shortages reach across North America and if you are paying attention you see that ER closures also happen in other provinces. Staff in our hospital often are abused by patients and their families and who wants to work in those conditions. During COVID the public put healthcare staff on a pedestal, even sending them Timmies, pizza and other treats. What happened? When going through nuclear cardio tests, taking hours, I was treated like a king as was everyone one else in treatment in that department. Truly professional and above expected treatment. We have great people working in healthcare that we lose to private sector and we need to find ways to retain them.
England announced a few months ago they were cut over 10,000 healthcare jobs . . . why? How? And did any governments try to bring them to Alberta or Canada? Are they doing something right that they can cut numbers?
I think we can do better and better is keeping our hospitals under government and finding ways to work better with healthcare workers.
Decades ago that Japanese rose from the ashes and became proficient and building quality cars, cameras, musical instruments, and tech . . . how? The management ate lunch with all employees, and had regular meetings which included the lowest to the highest workers, strategizing on how to work smarter, better and build a better product! They also enticed engineers from each field to come to Japan, paid them well and build large homes for them, one example was an German engineer who worked for Mercedes.
The most important point here is, working together to listen to all of one in the process, to build a better product! It worked well because for decades after some of the better build cameras, cars, and instruments came from Japan.
Today, we have become arrogant and leaders fail to listen to those ‘peons’ who have important knowledge as well!
Seeing the launch of Cancer Care Alberta, the new emergency health corporation, and Give Life Alberta brings hope that streamlined and coordinated services are on the way. Great to know support is available when navigating these changes — calling the Tend phone number could be a solid step toward finding out how to connect with local services or get assistance.
I wonder how much taxpayers money will be paying for the staffing of these three govt agencies that will likely contribute little towards health care of Albertans. However, Smith has employed more of her supporters again.