Despite injecting millions of dollars into Alberta's health care system, wait times continue to rise, according to a performance report the Liberals say is being kept secret from Albertans.
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman says wait times are getting worse in the province -– but says a recent change in the way the province divulges data to the public is an elaborate way of hiding the true results.
In the past, a quarterly report has been released. However, the government is now releasing a report twice a year that skews wait times in the province's favour, says Sherman.
According to Sherman, the quarterly reports were "rich with data," comparing previous years, regions and hospitals. As well, he said, the performance measure was based on a measure accepted worldwide by the health care industry – a nine-times-out-of-10 average reporting standard.
However, he says the government's switch to the twice-yearly report also includes a shift in the way performance is measure – now a 50 per cent reporting standard.
Therefore, he says, wait times are being reported as much shorter in the new reports.
Click through the slideshow below to see how wait times in 2013 compared to target times.
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Alberta Health Wait Times 2013
"The problem with the new reporting measure is that averages hide the failures in the system... and it's misleading the shareholders in the province, which are the people, the voters," he told the Huffington Post Alberta.
However, Sherman says AHS plans to keep using the old reporting system internally, which leads him to believe the performance measures being given to the public show the "government is clearly more concerned with keeping up appearances through political spin."
The province was to release a quarterly update on Sept. 1, 2013 and another one on Dec. 1, 2013 but until the Liberals obtained it under freedom of information legislation it had yet to be seen.
The report shows Alberta Health Services (AHS) has failed to meet wait time performance targets for hip and knee replacements, heart bypass surgery and several other procedures.
Provincial funding for health has grown from $12 billion in 2007 to $17 billion today, "so how can the wait times actually be getting longer?" asked Sherman.
It also shows 510 Albertan remain in acute care beds waiting for long-term care, which is costing the government $260 million annually. Sherman says that number is far off the target of 300, and up from the 459 people waiting for beds last year.
In turn, he says, the failure to meet wait times is keeping more Albertans in hospital, leading to a "cascade of events," like the spread of illness, more surgery cancellations and delays in care for people who need to enter the health care system.
When questioned late last month about the status of the wait time reports, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said the government's "commitment is to review the indicators to make sure they are relevant to Albertans, to make sure they report accurately on performance and, most importantly, to make sure that the performance of this health system cannot be distorted by the opposition."