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Originally Posted by Zarley
Well the South Campus didn't open until 2012, and construction is a capital expenditure, so how do you explain year-over-year increases in opex that have outpaced population growth from 2008-2011?
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A good chunk of funding still came through AHS, not to mention that even under construction, the staffing, purchasing, administration etc. all had to be done in the years leading up to it opening which means added costs there too.
There has also been a lot of catchup that has need to be played as a result of the Klein cuts all this time later. New hospitals up north (~$1B), big redevelopments down south (~$350M), expansions in senior care and cancer care etc. that all fell behind in the 90s and was slow on the uptake in the 2000s. Our healthcare costs are increasing because we had to build/upgrade/repair all these facilities essentially all at the same time and the equipment for all of them and the people to run it. There will of course be the inherent inefficiency in getting all that working smoothly.
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I'll admit that I've never worked in the healthcare field, but in my private sector experience moving from a decentralized structure to a centralized one has resulted in slower decision making, less accountability for front line employees, increased waste, and greater inefficiency. Based on my discussions with people in the industry, I'd be willing to bet that the same has occured since the transition to AHS.
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This could very well be the case. One of the big hopes for the board was to create one standard for the province rather than the 9 before which has resulted in a lot of criticism from doctors (my dad is one of them). However considering how young AHS is and just how much money has been spent recently on capital projects, we probably need more time to tell if the one tradeoff was worth the gain in other areas (if there was a gain at all). I think it is safe to say that switching back from the zones to the independent regions wouldn't be fun or efficient in the first few years either.