[Fuzz]

Edmonton could begin seeing surgical cancellations and other impacts to patient care in the next few weeks, a group of physicians warn in a letter to two of Alberta’s health ministers.

The letter warns that the doctors believe the end of the funding model currently in place for hospitalists will cause “immediate, unavoidable surgical cancellations” at hospitals in the Edmonton Zone. Those cancellations would need to begin in mid-March “for patient safety reasons,” the doctors write.
“Patient care would fragment into ad hoc, site-specific arrangements, increasing reliance on already overburdened ER, surgical teams, internal medicine, and ICU (intensive-care unit) services.”

“We are hearing from physicians who have received letters indicating that their stipend contracts will terminate by March 31, 2026,” AMA president Dr. Brian Wirzba wrote in a public letter to members in December.
“AMA legal counsel has previously confirmed that once such contracts end, physicians are not obligated to continue providing services that were previously compensated by stipends.”
The result may be a situation where most of the roughly 65 Edmonton Zone hospitalists — each of whom is often responsible for dozens of patients on a given shift — are no longer doing that work.
“Come April 1,” write the authors of the letter, “ in the absence of a contract or reasonable alternative, the majority of surgical hospitalists do not intend — and under the terms of their existing agreements are not permitted — to continue working.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...ries-9.7123380


This sounds well thought out. We'll tell our workforce we won't pay them in the old system, and have not told them the new system. If there is one.