Braid: UCP performing major surgery on Alberta health care

Braid acknowledges that the UCP’s changes to Healthcare are monumental, and then goes on to explore some of the merits.

I’d say one does not explore a discussion of the merits because the UCP do not even have the mandate for these changes. Nenshi correctly challenged the UCP to call the election on the issue. I’ll point out as of right now the unions’ Operation Total Recall has now covered 9 UCP MLAs for recall petitions, and another 6 more are confirmed by Elections Alberta for signature collection.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/mla-elections-alberta-ucp-recall-petitions-9.6990490

I take this whole issue as a UCP smash and grab. There’s nothing sexy about a centralized Healthcare system that reviews itself and runs self-reporting corporate audits. As Braid says, the Healthcare portfolio is worth $76.9 Bln, and the UCP just sees that as a dollar figure that can go into their own coffers. For example, look at “Alberta government undermined health authority to push lab privatization deal, A-G report finds”, by Matthew Scace. The Auditor General highlighted the Dynalife boondoggle,

Between 2019 and 2023, the Alberta government paid a combined $109-million to set up the system and eventually kill the deal.

The article goes on to describe how all the usual processes were not followed to achieve the Dynalife outcome:

“In some cases, it was unclear to us who was actually making the decision,” he said. “There was, in certain instances, a lack of documentation of meetings that were held between the minister, department executives, AHS executives.”

Mr. Wylie wrote there were “persistent issues” in governance and oversight throughout the procurement process. Neither AHS nor Alberta’s health department followed their processes to prepare a business case for outsourcing lab services, he wrote, and AHS continued with procurement “despite knowing that the main objective of cost savings was likely unattainable.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-alberta-government-undermined-health-authority-to-push-lab/

This ain’t about better Healthcare outcomes - it’s about how much the UCP Robber Barons can get away with.

This is a stick up.

Alberta's bid to privatize lab services wasted more than $100M: auditor general

The UCP continues its siege of Alberta’s systems. The Minister of Health is noted as restricting the Auditor’s access to information, and interfered with the Auditor’s ability to complete his investigation. The UCP has publicly disarmed the Office of the Auditor General.

From the CBC’s Taylor Lambert:

The report from Auditor General Doug Wylie highlights many issues faced during the investigation, including a lack of co-operation from key officials, obstruction of information by AHS and the province, and the destruction of evidence sought by the auditor general.

The provincial government said the DynaLife contract would save millions of dollars a year, but instead cancelled it less than a year later after numerous issues with service delivery and DynaLife’s own financial problems.

The province ultimately purchased DynaLife in 2023 for nearly $100 million and absorbed it into the public provider, Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL).

…

The auditor general’s report notes the many challenges faced during the investigation, particularly with lack of co-operation from key officials and difficulty accessing evidence.

“Our access to information was restricted by AHS and this restriction was supported” by the Ministry of Health, says the report.

AHS asserted privilege over many documents “without, in some instances, clear rationale or evidence,” and had a team of lawyers conduct a line-by-line review of the thousands of documents sought by the auditor general.

The report also says that “records were password protected and inaccessible, missing, or destroyed when key staff were terminated,” noting a particular instance when AHS destroyed notebooks belonging to a former CEO “despite our request to preserve evidence.”

Hey #Edmonton, some former #DynaLife Lab locations are closing, so if you need walk-in labs, make sure you double-check whether your fave spot still exists!

#yeg
#labs
#abhealth
#AlbertaPrecisionLaboratories

Lisa nails it once again! What a boondoggle.

#DynaLife #AlbertaPrecisionLabs #PrivatizedHealthCare #FailedExperiment #abpoli #KeepHealthCarePublic

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMj1U7AnL/

Didn't think this would happen in Alberta but it looks like Alberta Health Services (AHS) is acquiring Dynalife, a private diagnostics laboratory firm and merging it with Alberta Precision Laboratories, which is owned by AHS.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/dynalife-alberta-health-services-alberta-precision-labs-1.6940595

#Dynalife #AlbertaHealthServices #Alberta #Canada