Urgent discussions with government
July 11, 2023
Dear Members,
The Board and I have provided briefing materials and have had numerous interactions with Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange in recent days. AMA senior staff are also in contact with their counterparts at Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services.
I appreciate the minister’s time and efforts to listen to physicians through the AMA. It’s clear that she and her team are interested in working with the profession.
My focus right now is the urgent need to stabilize family medicine clinics in the community that are in a state of collapse. We will look for a tangible, meaningful response in the immediate term. Federal government funds could make a significant difference.
I will keep you posted.
You are always welcome to share your thoughts with me. You can email me via president@albertadoctors.org. You can also comment on this letter on the AMA website.
Regards,
fred Rinaldi, MD, CCFP, FCFP, LLB, MBA, MPA(HSA), BCom
President, Alberta Medical Association
"Fate whispers to the warrior, 'You can not withstand the storm.' The warrior whispers back, 'I am the storm.'"
2 comments
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Francis Adebayo
5:44 PM on July 11, 2023
The Family practice clinics are no longer sustainable unless something is done urgently, there will be more closures.
Especially in the rural areas where ordinary retention payments can not be paid to Drs, it is appalling.
David Smyth
6:09 PM on July 11, 2023
What input can the AMA give? You presented a 1% increase to doctors. The AMA was supposed to do fee equity year after year. I can make more as a hospitalist 8 to 5 in one week than in 2 weeks in the office and then with no overhead. Some hospitalists don’t even show up for their shifts. Urgent care clinics and high triage scores in the ERs are paying “no overhead doctors” buckets of cash. The College has 2 levels of MD primary care yet the pay is the same. The AMA has destroyed Family Medicine. The PCNs are a joke where receptionists make more than private clinic managers. The AMA and AHS are incompetent. Areas of medicine need to negotiate separately directly with the government. The College needs a wake up if they think there is after hours coverage by doctors paying overhead and trying to do real medicine while other doctors that don’t pay overhead have no concerns once their shift is over. The money moving out of family medicine is drastically increasing overheads of Family doctors as other doctors leave the offices. AHS is encouraging doctors to not do Primary Care and they don’t even realize it. My last post wasn’t posted let’s see if this one gets posted. The real truth is hard to listen to but in the end the taxpayer is getting much poorer medical care than they are paying for.