The Alberta government plans to change its acute care funding model, moving from a system that allocates funds based on surgery targets, which the province says are not always met, to an “activity-based” approach that would pay health-care facilities for the services they deliver.
The new “activity-based” model, also called “patient-focused funding,” would encourage competition among medical centres, including chartered surgical facilities and hospitals, offering built-in incentives to increase surgeries while decreasing wait times, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said in a video posted on April 7.
