The new model erases the geographic regions and creates four new subgroups organized not by geography, but by service delivery. Under the changes, all decisions will be squarely in the purview of LaGrange and the new oversight body she will chair, named the Integration Council.ĪHS is currently subdivided into five geographic regions. Under the proposed new system, Alberta will still have an integrated provincewide health system but with its fundamental structure and decision-making drastically altered.ĪHS currently acts as an arm's-length body, with its own governing board, making decisions to implement policies set by LaGrange's Health Ministry. It has 112,000 direct employees with thousands more working in labs, as physicians, and in community care facilities. Its annual operating budget is about $17 billion.

The transformation is to take up to two years, and while Smith says front-line health jobs will be protected, 'you're going to see a process of streamlining in the management layers.'Īlberta Health Services, or AHS, was created 15 years ago, amalgamating disparate health regions into one superboard tasked with centralizing decision-making, patient care and procurement.

'It also limits our ability to set priorities and require accountability for meeting them.' 'The current health system in our province limits government's ability to provide systemwide oversight,' she said. She said some improvements have been made on finding family doctors and reducing wait times for care and surgeries, but added it's not enough and her government needs the legislative tools to make changes. 'The current Alberta health-care system is one that has forgotten who should be at the centre of its existence - patients and the health-care experts who look after them.' 'This isn't change for the sake of change,' Smith said Wednesday at a news conference near the legislature. Smith announced Wednesday sweeping changes to dismantle Alberta Health Services, reducing it to one of four new service delivery organizations, all reporting directly to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange. Premier Danielle Smith says Alberta's provincewide health provider has lost its way, grown too big and become unaccountable, and that a massive reorganization can no longer wait.

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