Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has unveiled her government’s next round of plans to improve the province’s health-care system.
The government’s “acute care plan”, which was unveiled at a Friday news conference in Calgary, is promising to add more that a thousand new hospital beds, reduce surgical wait times, get rid of emergency room congestion and add resources for people in crisis.
The UCP government’s plans include a promise to add an additional 1,000 acute care beds in Edmonton and Calgary.
Global News
The majority of the new beds will be split between expansions at the Grey Nuns and Misericordia hospitals in Edmonton and the South Health Campus in Calgary.
Story continues below advertisement
“For too long the system has been struggling, the skilled professionals who run it know that, the families facing agonizing waits for treatment know it, and the same goes for folks that can’t even get the care that they need,” said Smith.
“We’ve made improvements in some areas but more is necessary.”
The province is also promising to increase the number of surgeries performed by an additional 50,000 over the next three years and says that will happen by “leveraging” more private chartered surgical procedures.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, Matt Jones, unveiled the province’s latest plans to improve health care at a Friday news conference in Calgary.
Global News
Critics are not impressed.
Get weekly health news
Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.
The NDP Health Critic, Sarah Hoffman, describes it as “planning to make plans.”
“Albertans don’t want to be triaged to the planning department, they want to be triage to a doctor in an emergency room. And so that was really disappointing,” said Hoffman.
Chris Gallaway of Friends of Medicare says the plan is missing some critical details — the people to make it happen.
Story continues below advertisement
“We saw the opening of the new cancer centre in Calgary, we’ve seen the new urgent care centre in Airdrie. We have more space but we haven’t expanded the staff budget to use that space to get more patients through the system and shorten wait times,” said Gallaway.
“The release mentioned all these plans for building beds and new surgery procedures and everything, but there’s little to nothing about hiring staff,” added Hoffman.
Friends of Medicare claims there have been 26 Alberta communities that have experienced the temporary closure of emergency beds, acute care beds and other services because of staffing shortages.
Critics say the province’s plan to improve health care is missing one critical detail: more money to hire more health care staff.
Global News
However, the province insists it has a plan to address those shortages, including recruiting more health-care professionals.
“We’re also looking at innovative solutions like expanding the scope of our professionals,” said Matt Jones, minister of hospital and surgical health services.
Story continues below advertisement
“So what more can paramedics do, what more can nurses, nurse practitioners? How can we keep those emergency departments open?”
“It’s an all hands on deck matrix of solutions that we’re working on,” added Jones.
But issues like additional responsibilities and more overtime are big concerns of the unions that represent health-care workers.
Both the Alberta Union of Public Employees and Health Sciences Association of Alberta have members who are currently in contract negotiations with the province.
Last week, 16,000 licensed practical nurses, health care aides and other unionized hospital workers, voted overwhelmingly to go on strike if necessary to back contract demands.
Among their biggest issues are stagnant wages and unsafe working conditions.
Meanwhile some 22,000 Alberta health and medical workers, including paramedics, are set to vote on a new mediator recommended contract after bargaining resumed this week.
The Health Sciences Association of Alberta said on Friday the mediator’s recommendations are based on a previous tentative agreement that workers rejected in September, though a number of changes are on the table.
The deal would see union members get 12 per cent wage increases over four years, but many types of workers would see one-time wage increases on top of that based on market comparisons.
Story continues below advertisement
The Health Sciences Association of Alberta says the vote will start next Thursday, with results expected on Nov. 25.
Finance Minister Nate Horner says he’s looking forward to seeing the results and that he appreciates work done by the union and Alberta Health Services to get to this point.
Besides paramedics, the contract would also apply to physiotherapists, addictions counsellors, occupational therapists and other specialized medical staff.
0:45
Alberta Health Services eliminates hundreds of positions, lays off employees
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
