CALGARY- Rab Rawbins has been waiting for surgery on his shoulder for the past 17 months, and there’s no sign he’ll get it any time soon.
“I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since the injury in November 2011. I’m in a lot of pain and I don’t have full use of my right arm.”
Wait times were supposed to be getting shorter under a five year action plan released by Alberta Health Services in 2010. It came with an increase in provincial funding and promises to meet aggressive wait time targets.
But according to the latest performance report from AHS, those targets are a long way from being met.
In the ER, the goal is to have 75% of patients admitted within eight hours. The report shows that’s only happening with 55% of patients.
The target for hip surgery waits is 23.3 weeks, but the actual wait is over 35 weeks.
And for non- urgent heart bypass surgery, the target is six weeks, but patients are waiting six months.
“There is still a lot we can do in terms of efficiency and we have our operations team looking at this basically on a day-by-day basis to try and make these targets work,” says Dr. Chris Eagle, Alberta Health’s CEO. “And I’m absolutely serious-this is a day-by-day challenge to people.”
With big cuts needed to balance the AHS budget following last week’s provincial budget, a Calgary economist says wait time improvements are only possible if AHS ensures no money goes to waste.
“Funding should be tied to accountability measures,” says health economist Herb Emery. “If the public payer is paying for something, what is the evidence that they’re getting good value for money? Is the money going on things that can effectively promote health or is it going to things it doesn’t need to be spent on?”
AHS will receive 500 million dollars less than it had been promised in this year’s provincial budget.
The board has already approved $35 million in administrative cuts.
With files from Heather Yourex
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