And here I thought Raj Sherman (Edmonton-Meadowlark) was the Parliamentary Secretary to Health & Wellness Minister Ron Liepert (Calgary-West), but according to the mandate letter sent this week by Tory Premier Ed Stelmach to Advanced Education & Technology Minister Doug Horner (Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert)...
You will work with the Minister of Health and Wellness to:Doug Horner's mandate letter seems to have more to do with Liepert's portfolio than his own. Maybe after his tenure in Education, Stelmach wants someone to keep a close eye on Minister Liepert...
• Increase access to quality health care and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care service delivery, and
• Ensure Alberta has the health care professionals we need to meet future demand, and
Lead the following initiatives:
• Increase the number of physician graduates from 227 to 295 by 2012;
• Increase the number of Registered Nurse graduates from 1,375 to 2,000 by 2012; and
• Increase the number of Licensed Practical Nurse graduates from 559 to 1000 by 2012.
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5 comments:
Um, just above that excerpt is the main body of the letter. That's pretty clear isn't it?
Not really, if you know much about PSE. The majority of the letter is directed towards health and wellness.
Considering Minister Leipert's "tenure" in Education led to a deal with the teachers on a longstanding contentious issue with the Pension, along with moving forward on an inventive way to get 18 badly needed schools built within the next 2 years....and all this got done in 14 months...i'm very much looking forward to seeing what Leipert can accomplish in health.
Nice to see that you're judging someone before they even start in their job Dave. But that's to be expected I guess.
In my view the real issue regarding this ministry is the primary focus placed on technology commercialization/venture capital at the expense of the advanced education side of the department's operations. This is clearly demonstrated by the ranking of the priorities in the mandate letter. When Innovation and Science was merged with AdvEd & T in January 2007 the executive suite of the new department was ruled by Innovation and Science people including the DM.
Also, you can see the "innovation and technology" theme throughout many mandate letters, which, in my view, means a lot of attention, particularly in healthcare, will be on finding ways to reduce service costs and improve "access" through use of technology such as web-based applications. Problem is, this type of an approach costs money and doesn't resonate with voters like hiring more doctors and nurses, so Minister Liepert will still have to go down that road too. While every government talks a good game about controlling health care costs it's simply impossible to do given the cost drivers in play.
Anon@4:05 - I made no mention of direction of the letter, I was indicating that the part quoted is not the main body of the letter.
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