Providing recovery-oriented care to Albertans
By Chantelle de Jonge Chestermere-Strathmore MLA
This past week, as part of the Alberta government’s efforts to refocus the health care system, several announcements were made.
The first announcement was regarding a new mental health and addiction organization, Recovery Alberta, which will be the first of four new organizations that will ultimately be responsible for overseeing and delivering health care services across the province. Recovery Alberta heralds a new era of focused care delivery. With a mandate to assume responsibility for existing mental health and addiction services previously managed by AHS, Recovery Alberta embodies a commitment to providing timely, recovery-oriented care to Albertans in need.
Additionally, to continue the innovative work required to improve the mental health and addiction system, our government is creating the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE) to inform best practices in mental health and addiction, conduct research and program evaluation, and support the development of evidence-based policies. CoRE will be established as a Crown corporation through legislation that will be introduced this spring.
Alberta’s government is delivering on a commitment to provide funding to help family doctors with their administrative costs so they can devote more time to seeing patients. Additional one-time funding has been provided to the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) as part of a December 2023 commitment of $200 million over two years to stabilize primary health care. The AMA will distribute the funding to eligible family physicians and rural generalists. Approximately 3,000 family doctors are eligible to receive transition funding of $24,000 to $40,000. The amount a family physician and rural generalist will receive depends on the number of patients they have.
Our government is also investing $224.8 million through Budget 2024 to help train more physicians in rural areas and will be supporting collaborative efforts from the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, and Northwestern Polytechnic to develop new Rural Medical Education Program Training Centres in Lethbridge and Grande Prairie.
We are committed to refocusing Alberta’s health care system to ensure Albertans can get the right care, when and where they need it. Through this refocusing, we will create a more effective, unified health care system that supports Albertans for generations to come.
As always, please feel free to contact me with your feedback or concerns at Chesteremere.Strathmore@assembly.ab.ca.
(Chantelle de Jonge is the MLA for Chestermere-Strathmore and the Parliamentary Secretary for Affordability and Utilities)