CALGARY, AB (September 2, 2011): The government is claiming a false victory in improving health care access and wait times, Wildrose Health Critic Heather Forsyth said today.

Responding to yesterday’s 5-Year Health Action Plan update, Forsyth said the government has sacrificed overall hospital care and compromised outcomes in order to report progress on certain, narrow objectives.

“All they’ve done is kick the problems down the line,” Forsyth said. “They’re rushing people through emergency rooms so they can say emergency room waits are down. The problem is those people have to go somewhere and they have no plan to address that. They have no idea where these patients go when they’re rushed out of the ERs.”

“Their lack of planning and foresight is putting further pressure on front line staff, who continue to do a tremendous job in difficult circumstances.”

Forsyth also criticizes the government’s new cataract surgery agreement, saying it undoes only a fraction of the damage the government caused last year by reducing the number of operating rooms in Calgary to just two.

Before the move, Alberta was meeting the Wait Time Alliance’s cataract surgery benchmark – with 82% of patients getting surgery within 16 weeks. In the last year, 90% of Albertans have had to wait at least 50 weeks to get surgery.

“As usual, they’re trying to fix a mess they created themselves,” Forsyth said. “The fact is cataract patients are still worse off than they were before this government started slashing access to much needed operations last year. They’re bringing back some of what they took away and patting themselves on the back.”

Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said the government’s recent failed efforts to improve health care access illustrate a pattern of behavior.

“This is how these guys operate. They screw up, they hear it from Albertans, and then they make a half-hearted attempt to get it right,” Smith said. “We saw that with giving back a fraction of the cabinet pay hikes, we saw it with their so-called amendments to Bill 36, and we’re seeing it now with cataract surgeries and emergency rooms.”

The Wildrose Caucus stands for free enterprise, less government, increased personal freedom and democracy.