Dr. Taft: Thanks, Mr. Speaker. People are asking me why the vast majority of surgeries announced yesterday by the Minister of Health and Wellness are going to for-profit health corporations in Calgary. 

According to Alberta Health Services Calgary gets 200 extra hip and knee surgeries in the next six weeks while Edmonton and presumably all of northern Alberta get a total of 16. To the minister: why the 10 to 1 discrepancy in favour of Calgary?

Mr. Zwozdesky: Mr. Speaker, that is an offensive question, and the member knows it. The fact is that waiting lists are managed by doctors, not by this minister and not by the Health Services people.

Waiting times are what we’re trying to impact, and if we get that right, and I think we are, it will affect the waiting lists. The fact is that these lists are done up at the local level by the surgeons, and when they compile all of their information, they tell us where it is that the lists are needed to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. It turns out that in this case, for this one example, the member may be right. But we could look at other examples, too, of different surgeries.

Dr. Taft: Well, to this same minister: is this government paying a premium to the for-profit orthopaedic centres for hip and knee surgeries? In other words, will the for-profit providers be paid exactly the same as public hospitals for the same kind of cases, or will they be paid more?

Mr. Zwozdesky: Mr. Speaker, that’s a very good question. The fact is that you can’t compare one system that finitely with the other because in the public system there are a lot of costs that are absorbed by the public institution, which don’t stand out and jump off the page, but when you contract out, you get an exact amount. You can’t do and you can’t compare the math that simply and that easily. To answer the member’s question just a little bit further, a cost-benefit analysis is being done with respect to some of these surgeries right now. I’ll ask for more to be done, and I’ll be happy to share it with the hon. member.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Dr. Taft: Well, thanks, Mr. Speaker. Calgary’s system of for-profit cataract surgery has been plagued with problems for years, including conflicts of interest, long waiting lists, and quality concerns. In Edmonton’s public system these are simply nonissues. Why is the Minister of Health and Wellness rewarding the problems in Calgary’s for-profit system and penalizing the successes of public care in Edmonton?

Mr. Zwozdesky: Mr. Speaker, there’s an RFP process going on across the province right now. It’s a request for proposals. It will be brought forward. There’s a cost analysis coming forward. I can tell the hon. member and all Albertans, for that matter, that when you look at the costs for cataract surgeries, regardless where they’re done but in this case Calgary specifically, the cost on average is less when they’re contracted out than when they’re done in the public institution, and we’re going to prove that.

Alberta Hansard, February 17, 2010

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