Liepert, Stelmach's bully boy, finally crosses the line
What business does minister have 'outing' gov't job applicants?

Paula Simons
The Edmonton Journal
Saturday, November 22, 2008
If the Alberta legislature were a junior-high classroom -- and some days, it sounds like one -- there's no doubt who the class bad boy would be. Health Minister Ron Liepert is the chamber's problem child. During question period, he leans and lounges in his chair, his body language telegraphing his boredom and impatience. He'll talk over the speeches and questions, not just of the opposition MLAs, but of his own backbenchers.
He comes alive, though, when it's his turn to answer a question. Smart, pugnacious, short-fused, he's the government's gladiator. He bellows and blusters and jabs his finger, mocking the opposition with a bully-boy inventiveness Simon Cowell could only envy.
In a Conservative caucus short on eloquence, Liepert is the star performer. He's faster on his feet than anyone else in the Assembly, with a predatory energy and wit that are quite magnetic.
This week, however, Liepert crossed the line. In question period Thursday, Liberal health critic Hugh MacDonald was grilling the minister on his appointment of eight new members to the Alberta Health Services Board. The Liberals wanted to know why there were no people from the former Capital Health board on the new steering committee, and why the board was loaded with business executives, as opposed to medical professionals and public health-care advocates.
Liepert couldn't resist.
"Mr. Speaker," he shot back, "ironically enough, the former member, who did not win his seat this past spring, who is now involved with Friends of Medicare, actually applied to be on the board, and our search firm who did the interviews interviewed him and determined that he was not among the best candidates."
The comments were a clear reference to David Eggen, the former New Democrat MLA for Edmonton-Calder, who now serves as executive director of Friends of Medicare.
An MLA can't be sued for slander for anything he says in the house. Parliamentary tradition grants members absolute privilege. But whether or not Liepert's words were slanderous, they were wholly inappropriate.
When people apply for jobs on government boards and commissions in good faith, they must know their basic privacy will be respected. Boards and commissions aren't supposed to be stacked with Tory supporters. They are supposed to be filled by the best candidates, regardless of party affiliation. If we want to attract top talent, from across the political spectrum, people must be sure their names aren't going to be bandied about in the house by government politicians seeking to score political points.
Would you apply for a sensitive public appointment, if you thought a minister might mock your application and credentials in the House, hiding behind his parliamentary privilege to do so?
On Friday, Eggen issued a press release, formally demanding an apology from Liepert for violating his confidentiality. Liepert was unavailable for comment, and no one in his office could say whether he intended to apologize. But Alberta Health says the candidates were never officially promised privacy, so the minister violated no rule. "There was no confidentiality clause on the recruitment," says John Tuckwell, who speaks for the ministry.
Well, if the names aren't confidential, then let's see them all. If Liepert can "out" one applicant, whose politics he doesn't happen to like, then surely Albertans have the right to know the names of everyone who applied to be on the board. If the candidates had no expectation of confidentiality, then why allow the minister to leak one name, selectively, for partisan purposes? We should be able see the whole list, so we can judge for ourselves whether Ron Liepert picked the very best available people to run our health-care system.
We're not going to get that chance, of course. While still insisting that the names were never confidential, the health department is simultaneously refusing to release the names of any other rejected candidates.
"Will we be releasing the whole list? No. No, we won't," says Tuckwell.
The minister, he explains, only identified Eggen in the House, in response to a Liberal question.
It's an absurd argument. Liepert could have answered MacDonald's question a dozen other ways.
And just what were the candidates actually promised? The search was conducted by Brent Shervey, managing director of the Calgary office of Boyden Global Executive Search -- who just happens to have chaired Jim Dinning's PC leadership campaign.
On Friday, Shervey declined to say whether candidates were assured of confidentiality, nor whether candidate confidentiality was standard practice at his firm. But here's what it says on Boyden's own website: "Boyden professionals adhere to a strict code of ethics for both clients and candidates," it reads. "We keep information in the strictest confidence and do not divulge anything without proper consent."
Meanwhile, Annette Bidniak, who speaks for the Corporate Human Resources branch of the Alberta government, says applications for civil service positions are always treated as private.
"Under our guidelines, that information would be confidential."
So is there one set of rules for the Alberta Health Services Board, and David Eggen, and one for everybody else?
On Thursday, Speaker Ken Kowalski invited Ron Liepert to do some "soul-searching" over the weekend and take "appropriate action" in the Assembly on Monday. I sincerely hope he will. Liepert has the makings of a tough, smart, competent cabinet minister, but he's wasting his political capital with bad manners and bad temper, alienating potential allies, including those within his party. As Alberta's health minister, he has a grown-up job to do. It's time for him to start doing it like a grown-up.

Whose Board is it anyways???

The announcement of the Alberta Health Services Board raises questions about the choices being made by the minister, and what direction the new superboard will lead our public health system towards.
The announcement of the new Alberta Health services board members includes the appointment of all interm board members as well as the appointment of 8 new board members with varying term contracts of one to three years.
“Certainly, we wish the new board well, although there are some glaring errors and imbalances in its composition that might influence it proper functioning”, said Dave Eggen, executive director for Friends of Medicare. “In our view, a voice for the public interest is conspicuously absent, which I hope the new board will be very aware of this with each decision they make. Also, there is very limited representation of actual health care workers and health expertise, which is a big problem.”
The board member’s experience leans heavily towards finance and insurance, land developers, oil and gas companies and lawyers. Friends of Medicare also notes that there is quite a pronounced gender imbalance on the board, which is unnecessary considering the many qualified people to choose from in this province.
Finally, regardless of one’s credentials, Friends of Medicare finds it disturbing that board membership includes persons from outside the province, and even outside the country. “Why does the board need to include a health care corporate “branding” consultant from New Jersey?” asked Eggen. “Minister Liepert needs to reveal his plan so the public can evaluate what this all is leading to.”

Halt for-profit clinics: Group
Victoria Handysides/Metro Edmonton
18 November 2008 05:34
Friends of Medicare are crying foul on nine Alberta medical operations that they say are violation of the Canada Health Act. These for-profit clinics across the province offer expedited medical services like checkups, advice, and prescription renewals — all for a price.One such Edmonton clinic, Dominion Medical Centres, offers “executive health examinations” in which patients are given vision and hearing testing, cancer screening, and CT scanning for $1,050. “They’re simply charging so people can gain access in a market where there’s a shortage of doctors,” said Friends of Medicare spokesman David Eggan.Eggan says most family doctors have a list upwards of 1,200 patients, and it’s tempting for physicians to set themselves up in pay-for practices, to cut down the numbers.“But it’s not like this private system is helping the public overall. What they’re doing is fencing off a piece of our health care system. Nobody gains from that, we’re not building our capacity, and just scattering off into pieces.Eggan is calling on Health Minister Ron Liepert to ensure suspected violations don’t continue, as the local health authority could face federal reparations.“When you don’t enforce the law, you send a message to people that it’s okay to break that law,” Eggan said.

National Medicare Week Kickoff

As part of National Medicare Week Friends of Medicare is writing to the Minister of Health in Alberta to investigate ongoing violations of the Canada Health Act in this province.
Violations to the Canada Health in Alberta were clearly documented in the recent report Eroding Public Medicare: Costs and Consequences, authored by the Ontario Health Coalition and released October 8th 2008.

The report found that for-profit clinics are charging patients extra-ordinary costs, queue jumping is offered for cash payments, and patients are exploited through the selling of unnecessary procedures and tests. The report clearly shows as well that where for-profit clinics expand, human resources are drained from the public system and wait times lengthen.
“There are 7 Alberta violations documented in the report, and more coming to light since then. If Alberta Health and Wellness doesn’t bother to enforce the law, then it sends a green light to other clinics to break the law without fear of reprisal”, said Dave Eggen, executive director of Friends of Medicare.

Friends of Medicare offers two new examples of possible violations of the Canada Health Act that have set up shop in Alberta since Eroding Public Medicare was published on October 8th.

We all know the more for-profit health care means less public health care. In places where this is allowed to happen health care becomes less affordable. Many people end up without access to health care when they need it. Health care workers leave the public system. “Provincial and federal governments must make full and transparent investigations and enforce the law when necessary”, says Eggen.

First Nation out to build private health centre

Calgary Herald
Friday, November 14, 2008
CALGARY - An Alberta First Nation wants to become a private health-care provider, proposing to build a $10-million medical and research clinic in Lethbridge.
The Blood Tribe is considering partnering with the nearby University of Lethbridge to build the facility on the school's campus -- an idea that has won the support of city council.
"I'm excited about it," said Lethbridge Mayor Bob Tarleck, who will write a letter endorsing the project for potential funders after council voted to support it this week. "We've been trying to build a stronger relationship to the aboriginal community."
The Blood Tribe is located about 200 kilometres south of Calgary.
Tarleck stressed planning for the Kainai Health Centre of Excellence is in the preliminary stages, but it's expected to include a three-storey, 33,000-square-foot building. It would provide radiological and medical imaging services, and have doctors' offices, a pharmacy and a laboratory.
The mayor's letter of endorsement is to be sent with a package to ask for $3 million in federal funding from Western Economic Diversification Canada. Blood Tribe health officials have met with the provincial government, Alberta Health spokesman Howard May confirmed.
Friends of Medicare, an Alberta health-care watchdog, said it will monitor development of the clinic to ensure the principles of public universal health care are maintained.
"They will be held under the very same law (the Canada Health Act) as everyone else," said executive director Dave Eggen.
"And we'll be watching to ensure they don't allow any queue-jumping or sell privileged access, the same as we would for any private health-care facility."
If the health centre is built off reserve, the project would not be able to access funding through the Department of Indian Affairs, said a spokesman with Indian Affairs.
This week, Randy Bottle, the chairman of the Blood Tribe Department of Health, told the Lethbridge Herald the centre "would be an economic venture for the Blood Tribe."
Canwest News Service

Province hushed up syphilis outbreak
Liepert dialed back public health announcements, even though disease numbers were rising

Paula Simons
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

EDMONTON - Syphilis in Alberta is no longer confined to high-risk groups such as sex- trade workers and their customers. It now infects teens as young as 15 and seniors as old as 86, as well as college students, married couples and members of Calgary's gay community.
The data comes from an internal 2007 report prepared by Alberta's former chief medical officer of health, Karen Grimsrud, in which she warned the province that syphilis had spread into the general population.
More than a year later, the outbreak has hit every health region in the province and the Northwest Territories.
The internal Alberta Health documents, obtained by The Edmonton Journal through Freedom of Information applications, stand in stark contrast to recent comments by Alberta's Health Minister, Ron Liepert, who has repeatedly depicted syphilis as a disease primarily linked to prostitution and transient oilfield workers.
That was how Liepert justified his decision this summer to cancel a $2-million provincewide syphilis awareness campaign, aimed at the general public, in favour of a narrower campaign aimed at high-risk groups.
Although promised for this fall, the smaller campaign has yet to be launched. It will involve sending notices to doctor's offices. Only three health regions, Edmonton's Capital Health, Calgary, and Northern Lights, are running their own syphilis public awareness programs.
The number of reported cases of syphilis provincewide has continued to grow. In 2006, there were 197 confirmed cases reported. In 2007, according to Alberta Health, there were 250. Between January and June 2008, there were another 92 confirmed cases. In 2002, by contrast, there were only 17 cases reported for the whole year.
Meanwhile, between 2005 and 2007, 14 babies in Alberta were born with congenital syphilis. Five of them died.
As early as February 2007, Grimsrud was sounding the alarm about the spread of syphilis into the general population.
"Cases have ranged from the ages of 15 to 81, all sexual preferences and ethnicities (though aboriginal persons are disproportionately affected) and all socio-economic statuses, including two young college students considered to have low-risk behaviour," she wrote.
In the Capital Region, she noted, only about 25 per cent of cases could be linked to the sex trade.
"Married people," she added, "represent approximately 20 per cent of cases reported."
In Calgary, Grimsrud reported, syphilis was found primarily among men who had sex with men.
By March 2007, Grimsrud and her colleague, Dr. Ameeta Singh, had amended their files to include reference to an 86-year-old syphilis patient. In a separate memo, Singh noted the reported rate of syphilis in Alberta was the same as that of China.
"With most of the province now involved, (Alberta Health and Wellness) needs to take leadership in organizing a provincial response," Grimsrud wrote. That response, she said, should include "a comprehensive communications plan to address the general population where persons may not realize they are at risk."
Grimsrud noted many doctors were also in ignorance of the extent of the outbreak, and might therefore not recognize the symptoms.
"Most physicians and other health-care providers are either unaware of this outbreak or not familiar with the clinical picture of syphilis and are thus not testing," she wrote.
Nonetheless, Liepert, on taking over as health minister, cancelled the provincewide advertising campaign to inform Albertans at large about the outbreak. At about the same time, Grimsrud and Singh, as well as two other senior public health doctors, left the employ of Alberta Health. None has spoken publicly about why they left.
Now, Alberta's syphilis problem appears to be spreading. Last Thursday, the chief medical officer for the Northwest Territories held a press conference to announce an outbreak there. In August, the N.W.T. found six cases of syphilis, the first reported cases in the territory in at least five years. Now, the N.W.T. has 33 reported cases, and health officials believe their outbreak has yet to peak.
"It didn't come from nowhere," said Dr. Andre Corriveau, the Territories' top public health doctor. "We really feel we are part of the Alberta outbreak."
On Monday, Corriveau said some of the first syphilis patients in his jurisdiction had lived in Alberta. While he didn't want to alarm people, he did want the get the word out about the syphilis outbreak as quickly and widely as possible.
"My thought was, 'Let's go out and tell everybody this is happening so we can kick-start this discussion,' " said Corriveau.
"Our goal would be to create a conversation within peer groups about this issue."
It's a conversation that's long overdue on this side of the border. It's all well and good for Alberta's health minister to insist that people take responsibility for their own sexual health.
Yet it's hard to convince people to protect themselves against syphilis if we won't even tell them how widespread and serious a problem it has become. We can no longer pretend this potentially deadly infection is only a problem for marginalized, high-risk communities. This is an Alberta-wide problem that requires an Alberta-wide solution. The first step is to tell people the truth about just what we're up against -- so they can guard their own health, and the health of their families.
psimons@thejournal.canwest.com
© The Edmonton Journal 2008

Report slams outdated medical equipment

By RENATO GANDIA, SUN MEDIA


Aging and outdated medical equipment in Canadian hospitals and clinics is endangering patients, warns a right-wing think-tank in a report released yesterday in Calgary.
Report author Nadeem Esmail blames the Canadian health-care model and says allowing a "greater role for the private sector" will fix the problem.
"Older equipment has a higher risk of failing or breaking down, may be less accurate or provide poorer quality of images, can be less clinically useful and may be incapable of delivering latest advancements in care," he said.
Nadeem is the Fraser Institute's director of health system performance studies.
He used data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information to determine the age and sophistication of medical technology in Canadian hospitals and other health facilities. He then compared those equipment inventories to guidelines of the European Co-ordination Committee of the Radiological and Electromedical Industries and the Canadian Association of Radiologists.
Inventories of aging equipment in health facilities should be less than 10%, according to the European guidelines. In Canada, more than 20% outdated equipment is still being used to diagnose patients, says the report.
Dave Eggen, a spokesman for the Friends of Medicare, said the Fraser Institute's message is very misleading.
"The No. 1 and the biggest concern with our public health care system is personal - health care professionals and not equipment."

The message in this article is appalling. Ron Liepert and Donna Stelmachovich should not get away with this. It is a thinly disguised theft of long term care beds just when we need them most. Seniors and families will be paying more and getting a whole lot less when they most need a hand.

Why are they doing this? So they can provide less service and charge more money. Simple as that. What a joker!

Long-term care crisis forces bed shuffle
Nursing homes make room for assisted living

Tamara Gignac
Calgary Herald
Monday, November 03, 2008
One solution to the chronic shortage of long-term care beds in Alberta is to transform some of the province's nursing homes into assisted-living spaces for seniors, says Health Minister Ron Liepert. Solve the long term care bed crisis by closing long term care beds. C'mon, Ron, you can do better than that! More than 500 elderly patients in Calgary are on a waiting list for care -- a figure health officials blame on the population boom and soaring costs to build new facilities.
Part of the problem is that seniors are often placed in nursing homes when their medical needs and own comfort levels are better suited to an assisted-living environment, said Liepert. So the long term care residents have been misdiagnosed? Show us all the people in long term care that don't belong there Ron. Why is there a waiting list of more than a thousand people on the urgent long term care care waiting list? What a bunch of baloney.
"The fact that 500 seniors are waiting for care is exactly why we have to look at a range of alternatives," he said.
One of only two nursing homes in Lethbridge will close and reopen in a year's time as an assisted-living facility. But Chinook Health officials say of the 120 patients living in the home, only a handful are likely to find the level of medical care insufficient.
Those who do still require a nursing home bed will be guaranteed a space elsewhere in the city, said Donna Stelmachovich, the health region's vice-president and seniors care director.
"We don't want everybody to have to go into a nursing home if they don't need it. The assisted-living model . . . is about a private, very home-like space that really supports our seniors to maintain even small pieces of wellness and independence," she said. Everybody doesn't go to a nursing home when they don't need it Ms. Stelmach-ovich. So up until now you have been mis-diagnosing seniors and forcing them into long term care beds when they didn't need it or want it? Good grief.
Seniors and their families seem to prefer it, but it's also a practical approach given the staffing crunch for registered nurses, Stelmachovich said.
"It really is about planning for the huge number of seniors and making sure they have the right care at the right place using our professionals appropriately," she said. We have plenty of capacity and ability to look after our "huge" numbers of seniors properly. There is a shortage of long term care beds. Donna and Ron want to close 120 long term care beds in Lethbridge. Whats wrong with this picture?
Not everybody agrees.
Hinton resident Linda Jonson describes the closure of the only nursing home in the town of 10,000 people as "an ongoing nightmare."
The facility, now designated as assisted living for seniors, has forced some families with frail relatives to either care for them at home or drive to communities like Edson or Barrhead to access the medical attention they require, according to Jonson, a seniors advocate who works with the elderly.
"You don't have a registered nurse on duty 24 hours a day. The same quality of care just isn't there," she said.
If nursing homes continue to disappear, seniors will be left with even fewer options when it comes to long-term care, suggests Lethbridge East MLA Bridget Pastoor.
"Is this a template for the rest of the province? The minute seniors move into an assisted-living environment, they've moved down to a different level of care," said Pastoor, Liberal opposition critic for seniors and community supports.
But far from taking away choice from seniors and their families, Liepert argues the province is simply exploring a range of options that include home care and other less institutional alternatives to nursing homes.
"Nobody's saying that long-term care facilities aren't going to be built -- we're always going to need them," Liepert said. "But the only choice right now under the existing rules is to automatically go into long-term care if you can no longer do certain things. That isn't how it should be."
University of Calgary researchers are in the midst of a wide-ranging study that is exploring the health of seniors living in assisted-living facilities in Alberta.
But based on evidence out of the United States, assisted living isn't perfect, said Colleen Maxwell, associate professor in community health services
"The philosophy on paper is a good one -- everyone wants a home environment, and if you need extra help, you want it to be in a setting that respects your dignity," she said.
"The concern is that assisted living might not meet an individual's changing needs, and because of lower staffing requirements, there might be poorer detection of health issues."
tgignac@theherald.canwest.com
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