Happy holidays to all, and may we reflect on our province’s government during this festive season.

First, our government closed hospitals and eliminated numerous hospital beds. Unneeded, these were. Then we experienced a spate of new hospitals under construction and stories of patients lining corridors and being forced into rooms with patients of the opposite gender, because of lack of hospitals and beds.

Second, the government created local boards of health. The rationale was that local men and women would staff the boards and create priorities based on local knowledge. The secret reason was that the government could evade accountability by blaming local boards for errors. Then the government abolished local boards and created a super board, which again it can blame for errors, but which has no conception of local needs and supplies. For example, there used to be three or four doctors in Calgary who performed prostate cancer surgery. Now there’s one. Why? Because of lack of operating room time. Patients have to wait longer for surgery. We know that there’s a lack of operating rooms, but does the super board? Apparently not. And did you know that robotic equipment, which makes prostate surgery much more accurate and successful, has sat for months unused because nobody is being trained to use it? Great job, super board.

Third, the H1N1 vaccination fiasco, in which nobody thought there would be line-ups for the vaccine. Great planning by our government.

Fourth, the closure of beds for senior citizens just as the boomers are increasing demand.

We must be wrong. Everything is fine in Alberta.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 12:36 am and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.