Alberta's government says important step with AMA provides stability
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
193.19826
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Arthur Green, Western Standard Minister, talks about the Alberta Health Practitioners Professional Development Agreement with the Province of Alberta. Dr. Green explains the importance of the agreement and the benefits it brings to the province's relationship with doctors.
Transcript
00:00:00.200
Arthur Green, Western Standard. Minister, how does this new agreement strengthen the province's relationship with doctors?
00:00:09.260
It does in a number of ways. I guess the first thing is about partnership.
00:00:12.660
First, we got an agreement and the key component and core of this is about partnership.
00:00:18.100
So we have a working committee, like the Management Committee,
00:00:21.800
and that Management Committee will help us implement the issues in the agreement
00:00:24.700
or implement the items that we've agreed to in the agreement and make sure that we get it right
00:00:29.140
and we agree on, you know, the agreement is done at a higher level,
00:00:32.700
so how do we actually implement it to make it right?
00:00:34.700
It also provides us an opportunity to address jointly a number of the issues that have been raised.
00:00:39.640
Plus, as we move through the agreement and we look at what's going on in the health care system,
00:00:43.940
it provides us an opportunity to work together to talk about those issues and solve them.
00:00:47.600
So, you know, that was a cornerstone partnership of this agreement.
00:00:50.680
The other way that that also helps is about stability, right?
00:00:54.120
You know, having an agreement so that doctors know what their source of revenue is,
00:01:00.260
you know, and can project it in the future significantly helps, you know,
00:01:08.960
Because if you take a look, you know, these are small businesses, right?
00:01:13.560
So they need to understand what their revenue source is.
00:01:15.780
So just having an agreement over a four-year period so they know what that looks like
00:01:19.680
and then a commitment to work together to address the issues,
00:01:22.920
I think those are the big components from my perspective.
00:01:25.120
But I don't know, Dr. Arnalda, if you wanted to comment further on that.
00:01:32.420
Certainly for community practice, all business physicians need to know
00:01:37.000
what their revenue source is, you said it correctly.
00:01:40.000
I think for physicians who are looking at opportunities to practice
00:01:43.360
in different parts of the country are hesitant to come somewhere
00:01:47.560
where they know either they don't have a predictable income source
00:01:52.240
or they don't have a predictable resource source to practice to their level of skills.
00:01:59.640
So it's, you know, it's very difficult to get the sub-sub-specialist neurosurgeon in here
00:02:07.680
So all those things, having a voice by a formal agreement can only improve things.
00:02:13.940
Before that, when we had no agreement, we sort of had nowhere to go