CALGARY – After two weeks of hearings in Edmonton turned up no evidence that MLAs and well-connected Albertans received VIP access to publicly-funded medical care, the inquiry into allegations of queue-jumping moves Monday to Calgary to hear from its final set of witnesses.
The $10-million Health Services Preferential Access Inquiry – Alberta’s first public inquiry in 30 years – opens for two weeks of hearings.
Among those set to testify is former Capital Health CEO Sheila Weatherill, along with her Calgary counterpart, Jack Davis, who is expected to take the stand next week.
Other high-profile witnesses include Health Minister Fred Horne and former Capital Health board chairman Neil Wilkinson, now Alberta’s ethics commissioner.
A slate of front-line staff from Edmonton and Calgary hospitals are also on the witness list.
Two Alberta Health Services witnesses (including former board chairman Ken Hughes, now Energy Minister) have been called to provide evidence about how the Calgary Flames received fast-tracked H1N1 vaccines in 2009.
According to the inquiry’s lead counsel Michele Hollins, the inquiry team hasn’t called any Flames players or management to the stand – “although we may still do so,” she wrote in an email Sunday.
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So far, the inquiry has been criticized as uneventful.
The witnesses who took the stand in Edmonton, including top health-care system brass, revealed no evidence of a widespread system of jumping the queue for MLAs or prominent Albertans.
Premier Alison Redford first called for the public probe during her 2011 leadership bid, after comments in two speeches by former AHS boss Stephen Duckett about VIP access granted by go-to-guys in the pre-superboard health regions.
Last month, Duckett testified at the inquiry in Edmonton he had no first-hand evidence of such practices occurring. He said he asked in 2009 for a memo to be crafted outlawing the practice only after the issue was brought to him by another AHS executive.
The memo stated “it is not uncommon” for health executives to receive requests for preferential or sped-up care for VIPs.
Health law expert Tracey Bailey noted the inquiry seems to stem from unsubstantiated comments so it’s little surprise there’s slim pickings when it comes to evidence of queue-jumping.
“To me it looks like $10 million spent on critiquing some allegations that were never very well-founded in the first place about possible past practices – and for what purpose?” said Bailey, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre.
“Even if we were to hear a different kind of testimony than what we’ve been hearing to date, that there was some major problems, so then what? That doesn’t tell us if we’ve got a problem today.”
A couple of recalled witnesses who spoke in Edmonton are returning to the stand in Calgary, including former hospital vice-president Deb Gordon and former senior operating officer Brigitte McDonough.
McDonough told Justice John Vertes, the inquiry’s commissioner, that Weatherill required on-call senior managers to “keep tabs” on care provided to VIPS who came to Edmonton hospitals.
McDonough and other hospital staff have described a culture in which higher-ups might lean on them to pay special attention to high-profile patients, but have denied providing preferential care.
Bailey said Sunday it’s heartening to hear health-care professionals say they don’t make treatment decisions based on a person’s social or political high status.
But a public inquiry is an expensive, time-consuming way to glean that information, she added.
The hearings are scheduled to run Jan. 7-11 and Jan. 14-18 at Macleod Hall in the Telus Conference Centre.
More information is available at www.healthaccessinquiry.com.
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