Alberta government axes AHS board — again

EDMONTON – Alberta’s UCP government has ousted the entire board of Alberta Health Services for the second time since Danielle Smith became premier, the latest step in the province’s massive restructuring of the healthcare system.

With the changes announced Friday by government news release, Andre Tremblay (pictured) will serve as the official administrator – a one-person board of directors – while simultaneously serving as Alberta Health Services’ interim CEO and the deputy minister of the provincial health ministry.

The latest change in AHS leadership comes as the Smith government continues to diminish the role the agency has long had in managing healthcare of all types throughout Alberta.

Last week, the government announced the creation of Assisted Living Alberta, the fourth and final new Crown corporation to take over the healthcare management role that AHS had held.

It’s becoming four separate agencies: acute care (hospital oversight), primary care, long-term and continuing care, and mental health and addictions. However, AHS will remain as the manager of Alberta’s 106 government-owned hospitals.

Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s office told CBC News she was unavailable for an interview as she was en route to Washington to attend a National Prayer Breakfast. In a written statement, her office suggested the board termination was to give government oversight of AHS, an arm’s-length agency.

“This is a critical time in our refocusing efforts as AHS continues to transition to a hospital-based service delivery provider, so it is essential that we remain extremely nimble in addressing any issues that arise,” the health minister’s office stated.

“We believe this is best achieved by increasing government oversight and involvement in the winding up of AHS as a regional health authority and overseeing its final transition to a service provider.

This move will also give LaGrange and her ministry a more direct hand in selecting a new permanent CEO of the hospitals agency – a role that the board had begun after CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos left in early January.

Friday’s move was abrupt; a brief board meeting scheduled for the afternoon disappeared from the AHS website around the lunch hour.

But it’s similar to a mass board firing by Smith in late 2022, shortly after she became premier. Then, the province appointed John Cowell as the official administrator of AHS, to oversee some changes before the four-part dismantling of AHS was announced in 2023.

Braden Manns, a former AHS executive, said the Smith government has been too interested and active in reshaping the leadership ranks, when that wasn’t what’s been ailing the province’s healthcare in a period of worker shortages and frustrating wait times for patients.

“There’s been no attention on getting better front-line care,” he said in an interview. “It’s all about reorganizing the deck chairs. And but again, the organizational structure was never the problem.”

Manns, who was associate chief medical officer and an interim vice-president, sees a problem with the lines of reporting. The CEO of AHS is supposed to answer to its board, and now that’s one person.

It also took Manns by surprise that the Smith government would want more of a hand in AHS management. Three members of the seven-person board were current deputy ministers within government (including Tremblay) and a fourth was Lyle Oberg, a former Tory cabinet minister with political ties to Premier Smith.

Tremblay, the man who will juggle multiple roles atop the $16.4-billion, 88,000-employee AHS — as well as the more than 1,100 staff in the Alberta Health ministry – sent an all-staff memo about the changes imposed by the government.

“As official administrator, alongside my duties as deputy minister of health and interim president and CEO of Alberta Health Services, I will oversee the successful completion of the system refocusing initiative, while also ensuring the agency’s seamless transition to an acute care service provider and hospital operator,” he wrote to AHS staff.

The new AHS leader’s background is in government civil service, rather than health administration. According to his government biography, Tremblay served as the senior bureaucrat in charge of Alberta’s transportation, agriculture and education ministries before he was shuffled to Alberta Health in June 2023, when LaGrange became minister. He had served last decade in a less senior role at the ministry that oversees AHS and sets health policy.

Cowell, the administrator before Tremblay, had spent much of his career in health policy, including another stint last decade in the same AHS role when the Tory government of the day had fired the agency’s entire board.

“No one is asking for dismantling, mass firings, chaos and new logos,” Alberta NDP health critic Sarah Hoffman said in a statement. “We all deserve public healthcare that is there when and where we need it.”