By GILLIAN SLADE on January 2, 2020.

NEWS FILE PHOTO

Unions congregate outside Medicine Regional Hospital to protest cuts to staff. NEWS FILE PHOTOUnions congregate outside Medicine Regional Hospital to protest cuts to staff.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com

The illicit drug crisis and how to meet the needs of those with an addiction has dominated health care throughout 2019 but there have been some novel developments, too.

In September, Medicine Hat opened a unique surgical suite – Southland Surgical Centre. The privately owned facility provides the space, equipment and staff for dentists and surgeons to use without having to go to the hospital or drive to Lethbridge to have wisdom teeth surgically removed. The plan is to provide WCB surgeries and other elective surgeries in 2020.

A surgeon can rent the facility and pay the owners a fee for the use of it. Patients then go to the surgical centre rather than the hospital for day surgery. The general surgeons are paid directly by Alberta Health (the health ministry) like they would be if they operated at the hospital.

It is a model that Health Minister Tyler Shandro spoke of recently as a way to reduce surgical wait times.

Since April a transformation of a home near the hospital has been taking place to establish a Medicine Hat Ronald McDonald House – the fourth in Alberta. It is expected to open in March 2020.

At the end of May the provincial government announced a performance review of Alberta Health Services in order to find efficiencies. Earnest & Young won the contract for $2 million and was to have a report to government by the end of 2019.

The election of the UCP government stopped progress on a planned supervised consumption site in Medicine Hat by Calgary-based HIV Community Link.

The government launched a review panel that came to Medicine Hat and attracted a couple hundred people who wanted to express their views. The report from that review panel was to be given to government before the end of 2019.

The Chronic Pain Association of Canada continued to advocate for its clients who in general have had their pain medication reduced or changed under new rules for prescribing opioids.

Barry UImer, executive director, said the so-called “opioid crisis” is about illicit drugs and many of them being contaminated. Those given a prescription for an opioid for chronic pain are not the problem and neither are the doctors prescribing it. Chronic pain patients have been unfairly punished, he says.

“We call on the minister to stop harming innocent Canadians and to immediately take the steps necessary to return decisions about pain care to doctors and their patients,” said Ulmer.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta has defended its guidelines for doctors prescribing an opioid and the monitoring of them.

More recently it has been the revelation of letters between AHS negotiators to unions indicating a loss of 5,100 jobs across the province that has attracted attention.

Executive director of Friends of Medicare Sandra Azocar said this will include 750 RNs, 70 pharmacy workers, 850 lab positions, up to 2,000 housekeepers, 350 administration support and medical transcription employees, 250 general support staff, 235 laundry and linen operations staff, 200 auxiliary nursing positions such as LPNs (licensed practical nurses) and health-care aides, 200 home care staff, and 165 food service staff.