A new report released by the Frontier Centre For Public Policy has found a “sizeable gap” between Alberta’s health-care system and that of top-performing Canadian provinces.
The independent organization’s 2010 Canada Health Consumer Index, released yesterday morning, ranks Alberta in a tie for seventh out of the 10 provinces and dead-last in the wait times category.
Lethbridge resident Ally Keith knows all too well the frustrations that come with booking a surgery. When she considered postponing an operation in Calgary to have her tonsils removed, doctors told her it could take up to two years to reschedule.
“I was a little shocked,” said Keith, who went ahead with the surgery yesterday. “That’s a long time … I thought, ‘I have got to get this done now.’”
Ben Eisen, author of the Frontier Centre report, said Alberta has seemingly made little progress in improving situations like the one face by Keith.
“In the specific case of Alberta, for the eight indicators we looked at for wait times, there wasn’t one of them in which Alberta earned a score of good,” he said.
