The government is pulling out all the stops to stabilize, strengthen and improve Alberta’s primary health care system. Additional funding of $200 million over two years will improve access to family physicians and help ensure primary health care is available for every Albertan when and where they need it.
This funding is enabled through the new Canada-Alberta Health Funding Agreement with the federal government. The agreement represents a total of approximately $1.1 billion in additional health care funding over three years for shared priorities.
These short-term actions will:
Address key issues or pressures in the system such as doctor retention, administrative burden and inflationary costs.
Be implemented quickly and efficiently.
Be transitional until the new payment model is ready.
Alberta’s government is committed to finalizing a comprehensive physician care model that will address the concerns of family physicians and rural generalists and ensure Albertans can access the care they need.
Other recently announced supports for primary health care include:
Ongoing base compensation for primary care physicians is expected to be $1.76 billion in the current fiscal year.
Committing to create a primary care organization within the refocused provincial health care system to coordinate primary health care services and provide transparent provincial oversight, with the goal of ensuring every Albertan will be attached to a family physician or primary care provider.
Investing $57 million over three years to provide family doctors and nurse practitioners with support to help manage their increasing number of patients.
Investing $40 million over two years to support Primary Care Networks.
Investing $12 million for the Community Information Integration and Central Patient Attachment Registry, enabling doctors and their teams to share patient information from their electronic medical record to Alberta Netcare.
We are committed to implementing recommendations from the Modernizing Alberta’s Primary Health Care System initiative through a phased approach.
Creating a primary health care division within Alberta Health.
