Dear Mr. Guthrie:
Knowing that our health care system will continue to need increased rather than decreased funding to operate satisfactorily, I cannot understand why your government thinks there are $262 million dollars that can be surplused.
Previous conservative Alberta governments have cut health care funding claiming that the system needs to become more efficient. I believe there comes a time when those efficiencies have been found and we have reached bare bones, operationally speaking. A two-year wait list for hip and knee replacements is still a great burden for those waiting in line and our emergency rooms still have daunting wait times.
The other suggestions put to doctors are equally alarming. What gives your government the right to decrease funding for doctors’ time spent above ten minutes with a patient? This is forcing doctors to run a Minit-Lube type service. Ten minutes is not enough time to build a trusting, well-informed relationship with patients and get all the facts regarding and surrounding the reason for the visit.
Most doctors get into medicine to help people; if that help is reduced to a brief ten minute interchange, patient care is greatly diminished. It might force the doctors to put up a sign saying we will only deal with one complaint per visit, as has happened in some jurisdictions. Elderly people are forced to see their doctors more often and usually for more that one complaint. Some of them have no transportation and no one to accompany them when necessary. Are you going to make their lives more difficult because you want to save money? I can see that many doctors facing such restrictions would choose to move to a province or country that allows them to practice medicine in a more wholesome and caring way. We are still struggling with doctor shortages in some parts of the province.
Asking doctors to do driver’s medicals without financial reimbursement is also troublesome; it seems that every service required usually has a cost. Suddenly, exceptions are decreed. Yet your government uses 30 million dollars of tax payers’ money to protect, defend and advertise the multi-billion dollar oil companies without these corporations having to lift a finger. Funny priorities, don’t you think?
I think that doctors need a fair salary and recognition that providing patient care is not the same as issuing licence plates. Talk to the professionals and the people using the system – they will tell you unequivocally that your proposals are completely out of line and show no consultation or forethought about the resulting consequences.
I hope that your government will reverse these ill thought-out ideas and with proper consultation try to improve our Alberta health care, not diminish it.
- Barbara Kohn
