Expanding Health Care Capacity
With the Children’s Hospital, Foothills Campus, and a number of continuing care homes and family clinics, we are blessed with high quality health care facilities in Calgary-Varsity. Consistently, health care is ranked as one of the most important issues for Albertans, and given our experience with COVID, it is now more than ever.
That is why we are investing in expanding health care capacity across our system. As part of the Alberta Surgical Initiative, we are increasing the number of Operating Rooms, including at Foothills Hospital, to eliminate the backlog of surgeries caused by COVID and reduce our surgical waitlists. We are adding 50 ICU beds across the province, including in Calgary, to build capacity to respond to COVID and support increased surgeries. Over the next two years, we are adding 10 ambulances in Calgary (7 days a week/ 24 hours a day) to improve service and response times, as well as providing stable funding over the next five years to support air ambulance service including STARS.
In addition to supporting our hospital acute care system, we are transforming our continuing care system. The Continuing Care Act (Bill 11), introduced this spring, will simplify legislation and enable us to transform our system so that we can support seniors living at home longer and help them stay closer to home. We are adding more than 1,500 continuing care spaces this year and will be spending $200 million to add even more spaces over the next three years. We have also increased funding to support more home and community care.
I am excited about the transformation in health care, and more is coming. I want to thank all health care providers in Calgary-Varsity and across the province for the tremendous work they are doing.
As always, if you have questions or concerns, feel free to reach me through email at [email protected] or call 403-216-5436.
MLA – Calgary Varsity Jason Copping proudly serves the following Communities: Banff Trail, Brentwood, Charleswood, Parkdale, Point McKay, Silver Springs, St. Andrew Heights, University District, University Heights, Varsity Acres
