Latest news with #AlbertaHealthServices
CTV News
12 hours ago
- Health
- CTV News
Water quality advisory issued for Trestle Creek Golf Resort Beach
Alberta Health Services (AHS) has issued a water quality advisory for Trestle Creek Golf Resort Beach due to high levels of fecal bacteria. At current levels, gastrointestinal illness may result from consuming the water. There is also a possibility of skin, ear and eye infection if exposed to the water. People are advised not to swim or wade at the beach area. The Trestle Creek Golf Resort is approximately 92 kilometres west of Edmonton.
CTV News
14 hours ago
- Health
- CTV News
AHS warns of potential measles exposure in Edmonton
Alberta Health Services (AHS) issued a warning Thursday about potential measles exposure in Edmonton as provincial cases near 1,000. The health authority said a person with confirmed measles was out in public while infected at the following locations: Dollarama at Glenridding Village June 16 from about 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. June 17 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Grey Nuns Community Hospital Emergency Department 8 p.m. on June 18 to 1 a.m. June 1 Anyone who was at the two locations during the specific time frames may have been exposed to measles. Those born in or after 1970 and have less than two documented doses of the measles vaccine may be at risk of developing the highly infectious disease. Symptoms of measles include a fever of 38.3 C or higher, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a rash that appears three to seven days after the fever starts. Complications of measles can include ear infections, pneumonia, inflammation of the brain, premature delivery, and, rarely, death. Should symptoms of measles develop, AHS advises people to stay home and call the measles hotline at 1-844-944-3434 before visiting any health care facility or provider, including a family physician clinic or pharmacy. If you think you have been exposed and are not protected against measles, you may be able to receive immunization to reduce the risk of infection. A vaccine dose needs to be given within 72 hours of exposure to prevent measles. Babies under one year of age, people with severely weakened immune systems, and those who are pregnant may be able to receive immunoglobulin within six days of exposure to prevent disease. As of Thursday afternoon, there have been 12 new cases in the province within the last 24 hours. There have been 996 cases of measles in Alberta this year. Per every 1,000 cases, one to three people die of measles.
CBC
a day ago
- Health
- CBC
Hospital-based decision making raises privatization fears, hope for efficiencies
The Alberta premier's announcement of her intent to restore local decision making to public health facilities is highlighting a philosophical divide in how to best manage the province's stretched health budget. Premier Danielle Smith published a video online Tuesday, saying decisions about hiring health-care workers or replacing hospital furniture belong with individual health centres, not Alberta Health Services (AHS) managers. "Soon, each facility will have an empowered leadership team supporting our sites, responsible for hiring, managing resources, and solving problems without sending every request into the vortex," Smith said in the video. The shift is part of a massive restructuring of health-care in the province, in which the government has broken the oversight of care into four new agencies and stripped AHS of decision-making power. A government news release Tuesday afternoon said the change will go hand-in-hand with a provincial shift to "activity based funding," beginning next year. The government will fund some facilities based on the number of procedures they complete along with safety measures, such as readmission rates, instead of allotting a global annual budget. Although the premier said the shifts will lead to faster patient care, health policy experts say they have looming questions about how it will work, and warn the transition further opens the door to private, for-profit companies running public hospitals. "They're trying to create some sort of a market — a competitive market to provide acute care services, and … arguably have different providers compete with each other," said John Church, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta. Church, who has authored books on the creation of Alberta Health Services and evolution of health administration in the province, says the announcement could herald a shift to the way Alberta's health system was run before amalgamation into health regions, and then a single health services provider. In an interview Tuesday, Church said the government moved away from local hospital control in the 1990s because facilities were frequently running out of money and returning to the government to ask for more. The fragmented system was time consuming and expensive, he said. Church said the province may try to control those costs by either selling off individual health facilities or contracting private operators to run them, assigning a fixed contracting cost and giving the operators the flexibility to run them as they wish. Handing control of critical public services to the private sector is risky, he said. Church pointed to a private surgical centre in Calgary that faced bankruptcy in 2010, prompting the province to swoop in to prevent mass cancellations. In 2023, the Alberta government rapidly reversed course on privatizing lab services when private operator Dynalife was on the brink of insolvency. More efficiency or more risk? Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at MEI, an independent public policy think tank, is more hopeful about the potential of site-based decision making in combination with activity-based funding. "I think we're going to see some actual change," she said on Wednesday. "I'm very excited about the fact that these two things are happening together." MEI believes competition incentivizes adaptability and innovation, Wittevrongel said. She pointed to health systems in Quebec and Australia using activity-based funding that had decreased wait times for diagnostic imaging and colonoscopies, and reduced some procedure costs. University of Calgary medicine and health economics professor Dr. Braden Manns is more skeptical. The former senior AHS administrator said Alberta moved away from local hospital control because facilities were competing for a fixed number of health professionals working in the province, which drove up costs. Manns said there was also inconsistency in medical treatments across the province, which meant not all patients were getting the best evidence-based care.. He said despite the premier's statements, local hospitals did have the ability to make hiring decisions — until the government froze health spending and AHS was forced to centrally approve all hiring decisions to control costs. Although competition and free markets may generate cheaper and better laptop computers, it doesn't make better medicine, Manns said. "It's different in healthcare, where you have to provide coverage for everybody and you're not paying out of your pocket, you're paying out of the taxpayers funds," he said. "We need to make sure that everybody gets care." Privatized, competitive care in the U.S. is among the most expensive in the world with worse patient outcomes, he said. "That's not the system we should be trying to emulate," he said. What does local control mean? Steven Lewis, a health policy consultant and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University in B.C., says it's unclear from the government's announcement what new decision-making authority a hospital will have. "It's always politically attractive to say to local communities 'You're going to have more power now,'" Lewis said. The test of that purported autonomy will come when a facility leader wants to add or eliminate a program that the oversight body, Acute Care Alberta, wouldn't have chosen to do, he said. Lewis questioned whether health facilities will now hire CEOs, or have new local boards governing decision making. "It's kind of like reading hieroglyphics," he said about the lack of details. In a Wednesday email, Kyle Warner, press secretary for the minister of hospital and surgical health services, said there are no plans to add administrator positions at hospital sites — but he didn't answer questions about local boards or the scope of facilities' decision making power. Warner said hospital-based leadership will be piloted at a single site to start, but the government hasn't yet chosen where. He said the government has no plans to lease or sell AHS facilities to private operators. "Private hospitals are illegal to own and operate in Alberta, and Alberta's government has no plans to change that," Warner wrote.
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Health
- Calgary Herald
Alberta to move to hospital-based leadership structure and eliminated AHS zones in latest health care restructuring
Alberta's refocusing of the health-care system continues with new plans to eliminate the 'bureaucratic vortex' which it says is hindering patient care. Article content In a video posted to X on Tuesday, Premier Danielle Smith announced the government's latest plans in the health-care reshuffling, which includes eliminating all five Alberta Health Services (AHS) zones and moving to a 'hospital-based leadership structure.' Article content Article content Article content 'This is what the current structure has created — distance from the problem and delays in the solution. It's costing us time. It's costing patients time, and it's costing Albertans the care they deserve,' Smith said. Article content Article content 'We're moving away from a heavy corporate administrative structure with more local decision making through hospital-based leadership.' Article content Under the new changes, hospitals will each have different leadership teams responsible for hiring, managing resources and troubleshooting. Smith said sites will be able to direct funding as they see fit to areas within the facilities with the most need. Article content The change would include eliminating all five AHS health zones and acute-care sites will be integrated into seven regional corridors which will have to report to Acute Care Alberta. According to a Tuesday press release, the sites will operate under the new leadership model and site operations will be managed by AHS through a hospital-based management framework. Article content Article content In a statement to Postmedia from the Ministry of Hospitals and Surgical Health Services, it said moving away from 'zone-based leadership' is expected to streamline decision-making and improve efficacy. Article content Article content 'AHS health zones are being replaced with health corridors to support an evidence-based approach to planning services, workforce, and infrastructure across Alberta's four new provincial health agencies,' the statement said. Article content 'These regional corridors reflect where Albertans access care and are informed by data on travel patterns, service utilization, and public feedback gathered during health-care refocusing engagement sessions. This new structure will help identify gaps in the health-care system and guide future investments in both operations and capital projects.' Article content The changes will be fully implemented by summer 2026, according to the province. The Ministry of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, AHS and Acute Care Alberta will be designing and establishing a new leadership and management model with an interim model to be established by November 2025.
CTV News
2 days ago
- Health
- CTV News
AHS warns of blue-green algae at Elk Island
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is warning visitors to Elk Island National Park of blue-green algae seen in the waters of Astotin Lake. The health authority said to avoid all contact with blue-green algae blooms and to wash with tap water as soon as possible if contact occurs. Do not swim or allow pets to swim or wade in areas where the algae is visible. Consider limiting human consumption of whole fish or fish trimmings from the lake. Do not feed any fish or fish trimmings to pets. Fish filets from the lake are safe for humans to eat. Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, can look like scum, grass clippings, fuzz or globs on the surface water. It can be blue-green, greenish-brown, brown and/or pinkish-red, and often smell musty or grassy. Blue-green algae Blue-green algae is seen near the shore in this undated photo. (Courtesy: Grand River Conservation Authority/ Skin irritation, rash, sore throat, sore red eyes, swollen lips, fever, nausea and vomiting and/or diarrhea can occur when exposed to blue-green algae or by consuming water containing the bacteria. Exposure to blue-green algae can cause death to pets. Waters of Astotin Lake that do not have visible blue-green algae can still be used for recreational purposes.
