Funding for Alberta private surgical facilities growing faster than for public hospitals, report shows
Policy has diverted critical resources away from hospitals and left patients waiting longer, researcher says
Costs and wait times have increased significantly under Alberta's move to privatize some surgeries, according to a new report from the Parkland Institute.
The analysis of the Alberta Surgical Initiative (ASI), released Wednesday, raises concerns about the government's declining investment in public hospitals while funding for private surgical facilities grows.
The ASI was started in 2018-19 under then-premier Jason Kenney. Between then and 2023-24, public payments to for-profit facilities increased by 225 per cent, researcher Andrew Longhurst writes in the report, titled Operation Profit.
His analysis shows that between 2018-19 and 2022-23, public payments to for-profit surgical facilities in Alberta increased by 66 per cent, while public hospital operating-room expenditures increased by 12 per cent.
Median wait times for nine of 11 priority surgeries tracked by the Canadian Institute for Health Information have increased under the ASI, the report notes.
"The Alberta Surgical Initiative has not improved total provincial surgical capacity nor wait times for most priority procedures," the report says.
"The provincial government's persistent claims about the benefits of this initiative are not supported by the available data."
The Parkland Institute is a not-for-profit research centre operating from the University of Alberta's faculty of arts.
Longhurst's analysis follows the launch of a lawsuit from Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was fired in January as CEO of Alberta Health Services.
Among other allegations, Mentzelopoulos claims she was pressured to extend private surgery contracts she worried weren't in taxpayers' best interests.
Longhurst says that between 2022-23 and 2023-24, the average cost of outsourced procedures in Alberta increased by 52 per cent.
His report says public payments to chartered surgical facilities nearly doubled over the same period, jumping from $28.6 million in 2022-23 to $55.8 million in 2023-24.
LISTEN | Parkland Institute raises concerns about private surgical facilities:
"Over the last five years, public funding going to for-profit facilities has increased five times faster than funding for public hospital operating rooms," Longhurst, a political economist and health policy researcher, told CBC's Edmonton AM.
"When we look at orthopedic surgery costs and for-profit facilities, they're up to two times more expensive than the very same procedures performed in public hospitals," he said.
"I think the time is now to really ensure that public dollars are going where they ought to be."
The aim of the ASI was to double the number of surgeries performed in private clinics from 15 to 30 per cent of all procedures by 2023.
The goal has not been reached. According to the latest Alberta Health Services annual report, about 20 per cent of all 305,000 surgeries in 2023-24 were completed at chartered surgical facilities.
Longhurst's report shows the Alberta government's payments of $154 million to for-profit facilities in 2023-24 added about 16,000 of the least-complex procedures to the system.
Private facilities working, province says
In a statement, the office of Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said the Parkland Institute report "selectively highlights data that supports ideological narratives while overlooking the practical, evidence-based solutions implemented by Alberta's government.
"The use of chartered surgical facilities has played a key role in reducing wait times and improving patient care, yet these successes are often dismissed or downplayed in favour of an ideological stance that does not reflect the actual progress we've made."
The statement said Alberta Health is targeting a record number of 310,000 surgeries for 2024-25.
Longhurst said the issue isn't that Alberta needs more surgical spaces. He said the major concern right now is that the workforce is being shifted from public facilities to private ones.
The ASI continues to shift the public sector health-care workforce to grow the for-profit system that relies on the same specialized workforce, he said.
"And simply by moving them to these for-profit facilities means that public hospitals can't deliver those life-saving surgeries."
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