Feb 22, 2012
New Alberta Health Services Hotline Designed to Deal With “Culture of Intimidation”
On February 1, Alberta Health Services opened a Practitioner Advocacy Assistance Line for doctors with concerns about the province’s health care system. AHS is presenting the hotline as a way to address last year’s allegations of doctors facing serious professional repercussions for speaking up on their patients’ behalf. But former Liberal leader David Swann questions the efficacy of the hotline, indicating its unlikely effect on health care practitioners’ fear of retaliation. “You’re telling the boss about intimidation from the boss or from the boss’s staff,” Swann points out. And according to Rowland Nichol, an AHS chief medical officer, little more than information and advice can be provided to anonymous callers.
Read more here.
