UCP omnibus bill paves way for more alternative doctor contracts, private surgeries

Health Care Guarantee

A United Conservative Government is committed to maintaining or increasing health spending and will ensure a universally-accessible, publicly-funded health-care system.

Health care bill could make matters worse for some patients, says Alberta health law expert

Increasing the number of private clinics within the province's health-care system will have an impact on patient wait times, but an Alberta professor of health law says it might not be the change the government is hoping for.

An increase in private facilities doesn't go hand-in-hand with an increase in the number of doctors — but could mean fewer in the public system, said Lorian Hardcastle, a law professor who works with the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine.

And if private clinics choose to limit their practices to patients with straightforward problems, that will create a backlog in the public system of patients with complicated health challenges, Hardcastle told CBC Radio's Edmonton AM on Tuesday.

"One of the concerns is that when you do something like open private clinics, it doesn't increase the number of doctors," she said.

"You end up with this two-tier system where doctors pick up the easier, less complex cases through private clinics, leaving those more complex cases in the public system to potentially wait longer than they might have waited under the current system," she said.