It is managed by the Alberta Surgical Group and will provide publicly funded surgery under contract to Alberta Health Services. “It’s no different than going to your family doctor. It’s a private company, private clinic, paid for through our public health system,” Health Secretary Jason Copping said. Like a doctor’s office, the clinic will bill the province directly for the surgeries performed. The province says the goal is to reduce patient wait times. “Wait times have been spiraling out of control for far too long. Now, after COVID, they’ve been able to bring some of that back down to a manageable level, but I think this is going to help them do better than that,” said Alberta Surgical Group’s D’Arcy Durand. But critics say the facility is another example of the government pushing for privatized health care in Alberta. “It’s not about capacity, it’s not about waiting lists as the government claims, it’s really just a plan to accelerate the number of private surgeries going on in our province and use our public dollars to fund that gain,” said Chis Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, a nonprofit group in Alberta with a mandate to protect public health care. About 50 doctors will be employed in the new facilities. Gallaway says there is a staffing crisis in public health care, and removing staff from public clinics will exacerbate the problem. “Opening a private surgery center doesn’t create another nurse, it doesn’t create another surgeon, it just moves workers out of the system into the private system and we’re already seeing evidence of that in Alberta.” The province says there are currently 8,000 people waiting for orthopedic procedures in Edmonton, and more than half are waiting longer than is clinically appropriate. “We are extremely grateful to have these types of partnerships that really expand our ability to provide services at our AHS facilities,” said Carol Anderson of Alberta Health Services Edmonton Zone. It is expected that 5,000 surgeries will be performed at the facility annually. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jessica Robb.
