Proposal for one-stop healthcare shop in Airdrie raises concerns over privatization

Plans for a new first-of-its-kind urgent care clinic in Airdrie are raising more concerns about for-profit healthcare.

One of the doctors proposing the one-stop approach says it’s a solution to the urgent need in the community.

Dr. Julian Kyne is with One Health Associate Medical, the company proposing what they say could be a prototype for a new for-profit, private delivery team method in the face of the healthcare crisis.

“Our proposal is that we co-locate primary care with urgent care in a single building and develop a health campus around that,” he said. “Having an urgent care centre embedded within a medical centre that has other family doctors, proper radiology including CT scan and ultrasound, as well as specialists; that’s a better setting for an urgent care centre.”

They’re hoping to get an answer from the province in the next few weeks.

The plan would be to try out the model in their current location, with the goal of a getting a new facility built.

“This would be a one-stop shop in which patients have same-day access and it’s team-based care where we’re more proactive with the idea of we try and prevent hospitalization, prevent people having to show up in emergency,” Kyne said.

He also says they’d be more accountable.

The proposal is drawing a lot of criticism.

Though opponents like the team approach, they have a problem with the private, for-profit aspect.

“When you’ve got an investor on the for-profit, we know from private hospitals, we know from private long-term cares, they have fewer staff, less registered nurses, they use less expensive alternatives,” said Braden Manns, a professor of medicine and health economics at the University of Calgary. “That’s how you make a profit.”

Manns was speaking on 660 NewsRadio’s talk show, Now You Know with Rob Snow, on Wednesday.

“This is not your typical area where we’d be contracting out because these are sick, potentially very sick patients, and we need highly skilled staff and everybody is going to be different that’s seen at an urgent care,” he said.

Healthcare lobby group Friends of Medicare wonders if this is the start of privatization of hospitals in Alberta, also criticizing the province for giving the company $85,000 in tax money to come up with a business plan.

It says earlier this year, the government told the Airdrie Health Foundation that the expansion and renovation of the Airdrie Community Health Centre had been paused in order for it to consider a proposal to add a private partner to the facility.

Friends of Medicare said significant pushback from Albertans compelled the government to once again move forward with the public project.

“Allowing a for-profit operator of an Urgent Care Centre in Alberta would be a massive, unprecedented shift to privatized acute care delivery,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, in a statement. “We were relieved when we heard the public project was back underway as originally planned. But we’ve since learned that behind closed doors, the government was providing public funds to the for-profit entity to develop a new proposal for yet another privatization scheme for Airdrie’s health care.”

The group claims One Health’s proposal for an integrated primary and urgent care centre has been done without a Request for Proposal (RFP) or any of the typical public processes for procurement.

Airdrie is the largest city in the province without a hospital, and Gallaway says duplicating existing services under a private model doesn’t address real patient care.

“Is this the start of privatization of hospital services in Alberta? Is Airdrie being used as the test case of a new for-profit model of acute care? Albertans deserve to know that decisions about our public health care are being made based on evidence, not backroom deals,” he said. “We are calling on the health minister to speak up and tell the public what is really happening behind closed doors when it comes to Airdrie’s health care.”

CityNews has reached out to the province for comment.