The Wildrose Official Opposition about the NDP Health Plan
EDMONTON, AB (June 8, 2015): The NDP plan to beef up and centralize Alberta Health Services (AHS) away from local decision makers will mean less quality care for patients, Wildrose Health Shadow Minister Drew Barnes said today.
The announcement was made today by the NDP after the release of AHS' ‘Patients First Strategy' and is a back down from the health districts model endorsed by AHS president and CEO Vickie Kaminski in March.
Our health care system needs to be about curing and serving patients on the local level through front-line workers, not through high priced managers at AHS, Barnes said. With the challenges facing our health care system, we should not be centralizing health care to one superboard, but should put those resources towards front-line services and local decision makers.
Wildrose campaigned on a commitment to empower local decision making and gradually decentralizing the delivery of health care services to the local level.
Having one centralized health board in the province, hundreds of kilometers away from many cities and communities across the province is not a recipe for success, Barnes said. We need to make our health care system about patient-centred delivery, and get rid of the bureaucratic layers interrupting quality care.
News Release by Wildrose Official Opposition
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The Wildrose Party is an active provincial party in Alberta, Canada, with headquarters in Calgary and Edmonton. It was founded in January 2008 under the name "Wildrose Alliance Political Association", and then renamed to "Wildrose Political Association" in October 2002. The conservative party is placed at the Centre-right and is currently holding 21 of 87 Seats.
The Canadian politician Drew Barnes was born 1961 in Moosomin, Saskatchewan and is an elected member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Cypress-Medicine Hat. Currently he is responsible to oppose for Finance, Education & Advanced Education, and Human Services.
Vickie Kaminski has more than 35 years of experience in the Canadian health care system and is a senior health care executive which has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alberta Health Services (AHS) in May 2014, which are located in the North Tower in Edmonton's Downtown area.
The Health Plan of the NDP (New Democratic Party) includes improving the collaboration between provinces and territories, revoking the cut of $36 billion funding, improving experiences of patients with the health care system, making better use of resources, and strengthen health care research. The plan also argues that giving all Canadians a decent income would give everyone access to healthy foods and lifestyle, which would translate to less cost in health care.
