How to start fixing Health Care in Alberta

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The subject of Health Care is raising it's head again in Alberta, due mainly to the recent firing of the "cookie monster", Mr. Stephen Duckett, who recently made a complete fool of himself when he tried to get away from answering some reporters questions with his now famous "I'm Eating My Cookie" remarks. For a man who was earning in excess of $600,000.00 per year, this behaviour was laughable.

But instead of dwelling on the departure of the cookie monster, lets start to look at the Health Care system in general and what we can do to try to fix in, or at least try to save some of the money that continually gets sucked into this black hole, with no improvements to ever show for it. Health Care dollars take up to 50% of the Provincial budget in this province. The same can be said for virtually every other province in this country also. And it is expected to just keep growing, with no improvements expected. So how can the system be fixed?

I will start this off with One example, and maybe you can let me know of some more that can get added in future columns here.

We have machines in the medical system that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each for diagnostics in this province that sit idle for 2/3's of the day here, every day of the week, while we have waiting times for diagnostics of 6 months to 2 years. MRI's are a perfect example. It can take you over a year to get an MRI. Yet these diagnostic machines sit idle 12 to 16 hours a day. These machines should be operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The technicians operating these machines need to start working shift work (if you want to keep your job), however the shift process gets worked out, so that these machines are always working. The wait times will virtually dissappear in a year.
I understand that the stumbling block to this starts with the union contracts negotiated prohibiting this from happening. Well Mr. Government Minister in charge, it is time to get tough with these unions and tell them in no uncertain terms, these kinds of things have to start changing, NOW, otherwise your union employee can go find another job if he doesn't like it.

This is one small step to help correct a failing health care system in this country. I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of other suggestions out there that could "FIX" our system. We just need the guts to actually do it. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Related articles

• Stephen Duckett, head of Alberta's health board, fired (theglobeandmail.com)