The following statement is to be attributed to Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) President, Mike Parker who is unavailable for interviews.
Edmonton — “Today’s update from the current government about the state of our health-care system was both encouraging and frustrating.
“We are happy to see our call to hire more professionals is finally resulting in action. But the government’s plan goes nowhere near far enough. Just creating new positions is not enough when there is already an abundance of unfilled positions. Just a few months ago, this government was proposing up to 11% wage rollbacks for our members. If they are serious about increasing staffing, they need to get serious about improving working conditions so Alberta becomes a preferred employer.
“The government talks about performance measures but doesn’t explain the numbers. Are Red Alerts dropping because they stopped counting stacked calls? Why don’t Red Alerts that happen outside Edmonton and Calgary get counted? Are response times still ‘call to door’ or is it now ‘dispatch to door’ as they signaled in past announcements? Is that how they got down to a 17-minute response time in the cities?
“And imagine doing CPR on someone for 17 minutes waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Imagine being with a loved one that isn’t breathing or is in incredible pain for 17 minutes… waiting.
“Our members aren’t seeing these improvements. What our members tell me is that things are a bit better than they were at the worst of the crisis but we are still far away from Albertans having the access to care they deserve and working conditions that will keep our members healthy – our measure of success.”
HSAA is 30,000 health-care professionals dedicated to protecting the public health system and the vulnerable Albertans who rely on it.
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Media Inquiries:
Kirk Heuser, HSAA Communications Officer
780-690-8199 | kirkh@hsaa.ca
