Premier Jason Kenney announces an expansion of the Alberta Surgical Initiative on September 7, 2022. (Image: Government of Alberta)

By David Opinko

AHS to contract new chartered surgical facility in South Zone

Sep 7, 2022 | 10:37 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The Government of Alberta aims to reduce surgical wait times for patients in Southern Alberta.

On Wednesday, September 7, 2022, provincial officials announced an expansion of the Alberta Surgical Initiative (ASI) to allow for more private chartered surgical facilities.

Health Minister Jason Copping says Alberta Health Services (AHS) will put out requests for proposals for surgery operators in both the Central and South Health Zones.

“Through new contracts, AHS will fund an additional 1,350 surgeries in the Central Zone and about 1,250 more procedures in the South Zone,” says Copping. “The surgeries include hip and knee replacement, general surgeries like hernia repairs, and others.”

Copping explains that surgeries conducted in private chartered facilities are publicly funded with no charges to the patient and operate to the same standards as ones performed in hospitals.

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“It also has two advantages to the health system,” says Copping. “It reduces costs, which frees up more dollars into doing more surgeries, and it frees up hospital operating rooms to do them with a focus on more complex surgeries that need to get done in a hospital setting”

Premier Jason Kenney says the strategy of utilizing chartered surgical facilities is already making a difference.

As of April 1, 2022, chartered facilities in Calgary and Edmonton began conducting eye-related surgeries.

Kenney says, “It’s already enabled us to cut the wait times for cataract surgeries nearly in half from 19 weeks in 2020 to 10 weeks last year. That’s shorter than at any time under, for example, the previous government. In fact, it’s shorter than any time since 2015.”

READ MORE: Chartered facilities to reduce wait times for eye surgeries in Alberta

“If anybody tries to argue that contracting out publicly-insured surgeries to privately-operated clinics is risky or unproven, let’s be clear, the data says the opposite is true,” the premier adds.

The province reported in August 2020 that, during the 2021-22 fiscal year, doctors performed 22,500 cancer surgeries in Alberta. This marked an increase of 12.5% compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2018-19.

Kenney acknowledges that surgical wait times, while coming down, are still not up to standards. More than 70,000 Albertans are currently awaiting non-urgent scheduled surgeries.

READ MORE: Cancer surgeries in Alberta above pre-pandemic levels