Posted by Dave Panabaker on Apr 24, 2017
The Rotary Club of Medicine Hat was pleased to welcome several representatives of the Health Quality Council of Alberta.
 
 
Andrew Neuner, Chief Executive Office spoke about the role of HQCA, an organization that very few of us know much about.  They are a provincial agency that pursues opportunities to improve patient safety and health service quality for Albertans.  He spoke about the groups role, which includes working collaboratively with healthcare providers and partners, to drive improvement to both the cost and quality of delivered services.  Andrew spoke about the "fact" that Albertans pay more per capita for healthcare than any other province in Canada, but on an outcomes basis rate only average or less than average in the value of that service.  This isn't sustainable, and they attempt to provide factual information from surveys and other learning methods to ensure future Albertans will experience an improvement in the level of care.
 
Their website is http://www.hqca.ca and their work, and our current statistics can be viewed there.  A number of pieces of literature were left for the club members.
 
Certainly a popular subject of conversation, Andrew answered a number of questions from members of the audience.