2024/2025 Membership Renewal is now open!
The "voice of the AMA" – Published regularly throughout the year, the President's Letter informs you about Alberta Medical Association positions on key and complex issues in Alberta’s health care.
Read the November 22 President's Letter
As part of a cross-ministry effort by the provincial government, Alberta Health has invited the Alberta Medical Association to complete a survey on behalf of members. It relates to “legislative changes to safeguard freedom of expression for regulated professionals.”
Right now, the AMA is engaged in more advocacy than at any other time in our history. In the category of fact checking, we coordinated yesterday with section experts to respond to comments made by the premier in a news conference.
Here is AMA Fact Checkup – Issue 2. In this issue, we check and correct government on statements they have made.
Comments on the most recent President's Letter are enabled and welcome. You may also contact the AMA President by email at [email protected].
Below you will find previous issues of The President's Letter. For older issues no longer on the website, contact us.
You may have heard that government has released $12 million to the AMA to provide family physicians and rural generalists with support for costs related to panel management and practice improvement activities. This is part of the October 2023 release of the MAPS final reports, which included an announcement of $57 million in funding over three years for physicians participating in panel management. We did not negotiate these funds.
Yesterday, Alberta Health issued a Bulletin announcing that their billing system has been updated and physicians can now submit eligible ‘good faith’ claims – retroactive to April 1, 2022.
I am pleased to inform you that last week, after being without a contract since 2018, our colleagues in laboratory medicine voted yes to a new agreement with Alberta Precision Laboratories, effective April 1, 2022.
Yesterday the government announced plans to restrict access to gender-affirming treatments for pediatric trans patients. I immediately consulted with the Section of Pediatrics for the expertise these colleagues can bring regarding these vulnerable patients.
Last week we released disturbing survey results including that 61% of family and rural generalist physicians are contemplating early retirement or relocation, while one in five fear they can’t maintain their clinics more than six months.
Our news conference on Tuesday about the crisis in family medicine received excellent media coverage. You can review the news conference recording (or watch the Q&A session) as we highlighted new data measuring the extreme financial instability and threat to viability facing family and rural generalist physician practices.
We were pleased to see the Alberta Health Bulletin issued earlier today announcing that enhanced virtual care codes for mental health services provided are now live.
The situation in family and rural medicine isn’t just bad – it's dire. That’s what I told reporters earlier today at a news conference we held to share the results of last week’s survey of family and rural generalist physicians regarding the state of their practices and finances.
Through the holiday season and into this early new year, we have advocated ceaselessly for your needs with government, in the media and through social media.
As you know, we’ve been advocating intensely and continuously to stabilize family and rural generalist practices in Alberta. I also promised you that there would be more information coming about AMA proposals to government to address the parallel crisis in acute care.