EDMONTON—Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is open to the idea of the government potentially reimbursing people who need to travel outside the province for medically necessary surgery if it cannot be provided quickly enough at home.
“I cannot wait any longer for my hip surgery. It’s compromising my health too much. So I’m going out of province and we'll be spending $20,000 plus,” said the listener.
He said the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP) would not be covering the operation.
“Since AHCIP will not be incurring the cost of my surgery, it only seems fair that I'd be reimbursed what it would cost them had I had the surgery done in Alberta. What do you think?” he asked the premier.
Ms. Smith said she agreed with him. “If we can’t provide the surgeries here, then we should be reimbursing people at the rate that they’re paying elsewhere,” she said.
She said she ran for election on that concept in 2012 and was prepared to commit to it during the last election campaign, which ended May 29, but out-of-control provincial wildfires disrupted that plan and some of her intended campaign promises.
“If we are not treating people here within a medically reasonable period of time, then we have to be able to support them getting their care elsewhere. But I'll tell you what, I want to solve the problem here first,” said Ms. Smith.
She said she wants Alberta to have a system where the maximum surgeries are being carried out “every single week” so that residents do not find themselves in the same position as the listener.
Improving Capacity
Ms. Smith said that Dr. Cowell is focused on improving the capacity of doctor-run surgical centres, and also on ensuring every AHS facility has all of its operating rooms open and is operating at the highest possible capacity.The premier said that there are currently 60,000 surgeries being performed in the province each year, and that she has been advised that the backlog of patients waiting longer than medically recommended will be eliminated by March 2024.
“The next step is that we’ve got to not let people languish on the specialist list,” said Ms. Smith, noting the time it takes to see a family doctor, be referred to a specialist, and be added to a list for treatment.
“We have to compress all of that,” she said.
“Perhaps what the last caller suggested is the right way of doing it ... by having a bit of a penalty, saying, ‘If we don’t do it here, we’re going to pay to have it done elsewhere,’” Mrs. Smith said, adding that any policy would need to be worked through with her caucus.
“But in principle, I think he’s dead right,” said Ms. Smith. She said her goal is to have the Alberta health system be so efficient in the next three years that the province can “take patients from other provinces because we’re so efficient.”
“I’m seeing British Columbia sending patients to America. Saskatchewan is sending patients out of province. If we can get our system working properly to take care of ourselves, then I think we can also be offering that service to others. That’s where I want us to get to,” said the premier.
“The premier—the entire UCP government, for that matter—should be focused on ending the crisis in public health care and delivering the surgeries that Albertans need right here,” she said.
