All some people want for Christmas is a family doctor. More than 650,000 people in Alberta do not have a regular health care provider, and are sometimes forced to wait long hours in the emergency room for conditions better managed in primary care.
Primary care is the foundation of our health system and covers the everyday needs of patients. Primary care providers prevent, detect and treat illnesses; give advice regarding healthy living; and manage chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and asthma. They have trusted, long-term relationships with their patients and often provide health services from cradle to grave for their community.
Patients who see a regular primary care provider have better long-term health than those who don’t and they live longer. Primary care provides these benefits while lowering health care expenditures.
In the last provincial elections, both the NDP and the UCP parties committed to better access to primary care. Current premier, Danielle Smith, promised every Albertan a primary care provider, but has not put forth a convincing plan to make good on her pledge.
On the other hand, in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford reached across party lines to appoint Dr. Jane Philpott, former federal health minister and member of the Liberal cabinet, to lead a primary care action team whose mandate is to attach every person in Ontario with a primary care provider within the next five years.
Philpott was chosen for the job because she sets out a very clear proposal for universal access to primary care in her book Health for All, launched earlier this year. Philpott’s vision is simple but bold: everybody will be guaranteed access to a primary care team within a half hour of where they live. Just as every child is automatically assigned a public school in their neighbourhood, every person will have access to ongoing, comprehensive primary care even if they were to move residences.
Ontario already has the highest proportion of residents attached to a regular health provider and Philpott is going to take them across the finish line of attaching everybody to primary care. We in Alberta need to demand the same from our government.
We need to make our voices heard strong and clear through conversations with our MLAs, letters to Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange and unequivocal signals to Premier Smith that we too want the advantages of universal access to primary care. We need to urge our government to set up a primary care action team, chose the best person to lead that team, and give full support and adequate resources to get the job done.
The time for action is now. Instead of the expensive smoke and mirrors exercise of dismantling Alberta Health Services, our government needs to make meaningful change in the lives of Albertans. We need them to invest adequate resources into primary care to build a strong and reliable foundation for the rest of the health care system. Every Albertan deserves the right to be healthy, and universal access to primary care is crucial to achieving this goal.
Vamini Selvanandan is a rural family physician and public health practitioner in Alberta.