Dear Members,
Last week, the Alberta Medical Association released our second annual State of Health Care report, a public-facing report designed to better understand how Albertans are experiencing the health system today and to track changes over time.
This work is part of our commitment to informed reform: grounding advocacy in evidence, elevating patient voices and helping ensure that decisions about the health system are informed by real experiences on the ground.
The 2026 report builds on last year’s baseline report and confirms a clear and important pattern.
Albertans continue to have high confidence in the care they receive from physicians and other health professionals. At the same time, their confidence in the system’s ability to deliver that care, when and where it is needed, is declining:
- Across every part of the system, access and timeliness are emerging as the defining challenges.
- Wait times are shaping patient experience in primary care, specialist access and emergency services.
- Even where access has improved modestly, such as in family medicine, getting timely appointments remains difficult for many patients.
- Nearly one in four Albertans is waiting to see a specialist, with the vast majority describing those waits as too long.
Areas such as mental health, particularly pediatric mental health, continue to show significant gaps in access and coordination of care. What stands out most is the growing gap between two realities:
- The quality of care being delivered by physicians remains a core strength of our system.
- Access to that care, especially in a timely and coordinated way, is under increasing strain, creating opportunities for focused improvement.
Albertans are not questioning the dedication or skill of those providing care. They are questioning whether the system is able to connect them to that care when they need it most, and that is where change is needed.
For physicians, these findings will be familiar. They reflect what you see every day in your practices, your communities and across the system, and they reinforce the importance of continued advocacy focused on access, sustainability and system design.
As with last year’s report, our goal is not only to describe the current state of the system, but to establish a credible benchmark that allows us to track change over time and support meaningful, evidence-based solutions. This is particularly important given the impending introduction of dual practice and patient-directed diagnostic testing in Alberta. These changes have the potential to significantly affect the public health care system, particularly in areas where patient access is already strained.
While these challenges are significant, they are not insurmountable. The findings in this report point to clear opportunities to improve access, strengthen coordination and better connect patients to the care they need. Physicians are committed to working with government and system partners to advance practical, evidence-based solutions that build on the strong foundation already in place.
We encourage you to explore the full report and the broader conversation it is helping to shape. This work is about more than understanding the challenges. It’s about ensuring we move forward with clarity, collaboration and a shared commitment to improving care for all Albertans.
- Read the full State of Health Care – 2026 Report.
- View media coverage.
- Follow the conversation:
Regards,
Brian Wirzba, MD, FRCPC
President, Alberta Medical Association