Health Care

Leadership in Public Health Care

An Alberta Liberal government will strengthen and improve sustainable public health care, not dismantle it.

The Alberta Liberal Action Plan for Health Care

Address health workforce shortages

• Train enough nurses, doctors and other health professionals to meet Alberta’s need.
• Explore new ways of funding physicians, creating multidisciplinary health care teams and encouraging better workforce tracking.

Reduce wait times

• Create specialized surgical centres within the public system.
• Implement a province-wide Community Health Centre model, providing more flexible access to physicians, encouraging more efficient use of other health professionals, and reducing emergency room overcrowding.
• Increase acute care capacity to reduce overcrowding, by constructing new hospitals in southeast Calgary, Grande Prairie and elsewhere, and devise long-term plans to open more beds in Edmonton and rural centres.
• Provide prompt and equal access to medically necessary MRI and CT scans.

Manage health system costs

• Implement a public pharmacare program to reduce costs and ensure equal access to medications.
• Conduct an independent and open review of regionalization including the role of the Department of Health and Wellness.
• Establish predictable funding levels, adjusted annually to reflect population growth, inflation, and aging.
• Ensure adequate funding for rural health services to reflect the special challenges and higher costs of delivering those services in sparsely populated regions.
• Create stable funding and long-term planning to accommodate an aging population.
• Bring the WCB back to using the public health care system so that the financial benefits of treating WCB clients flow back to taxpayers.

Keep Albertans healthier

• Conduct a Health Impact Assessment on all major government policy and funding decisions, to examine their effect on a range of factors that influence the health of our society.
• Establish a Community Wellness Fund of approximately $200 million per year, using taxes from tobacco sales, to support wellness and lifestyle initiatives and to expand Family and Community Support Services.

Improve continuing care

• Legislate clear, measurable, resident-focused standards, province-wide, including standards for staff-to-resident ratios.
• Implement competitive wages, permanent positions, increased staffing levels and appropriate staff mixes, and establish training standards.
• Establish a Continuing Care Commissioner, accountable to the Legislature.
• Establish autonomous resident and family councils in all homes.
• Ensure that stimulating activities and therapies are readily available.
• Legislate a Resident’s Bill of Rights.
• Fund the creation and operation of an independent Advocacy Centre for Dependent Adults.
• Legislate a minimum level of care per day for those in continuing care.
• Partner with colleges, universities and professional associations to recruit and train people for careers in continuing care.
• Commit to immediate short term, accountable funding.
• Concentrate funding in front-line resident care.

Other policies

Click here to download the Alberta Liberal Action Plan for Health Care in .pdf format.