Alberta Health Services – where is the beef?

Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:

“In a recent study, the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 53 percent of family physicians and 51 percent of internal medicine physicians were not accepting new patients. When new patients could get appointments, they faced long waits, averaging 36 days to see family doctors and 48 days for internists,” says an article in the New York Times (online June 26, 2011). This is about the U.S.

There is a shortage of doctors everywhere. Doctors from Canada and the rest of the world are lured to go to work in the U.S. where the grass seems to be greener than elsewhere. Government of Alberta should listen to patients, doctors and other health care providers to improve the current low morale and frustration which the new system has created.

I have been unable to keep tract of all the new administrative positions (with fancy titles) which have been set up in the Alberta Health Services. It is hard to know who is doing what. It would be nice to see the administrative flow chart to find out how the hierarchy works. I get so many memos each week, the same memo first comes by email, then by fax to my office and then a hard copy in my mail box at the hospital. Most of them are fairly long. A weekly newsletter probably can do the same job with less wastage of time and tax payer’s money.

It seems, there are too many cooks in the kitchen but not enough beef to satisfy the public and the health care providers. What happened to our famous Alberta beef? Gone south?

Noorali Bharwani
Medicine Hat

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