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.
The Fall Representative Forum marked a major milestone in terms of the AMA’s Income Equity Initiative. Delegates expressed strong support for IEI and use of the Income Equity Measure to guide AMA decision making.
The Representative Forum meeting last weekend included a candid session with Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange. The minister addressed the RF and then took questions from the delegates.
Progress continues toward implementing the agreement. Top-ups to the one-time recognition payments that were issued in December of 2022 will be made this week.
I wrote to you May 31 regarding the fact that our laboratory medicine colleagues have been without a contract for five years despite our continued efforts to advance one. Alberta Health Services agreed last May to the AMA’s proposal for arbitration and this is now scheduled to take place in November.
The Board meets next week in final preparations for the September 22-23 Representative Forum. The RF’s guidance will be more important than ever at this time and in this environment.
The 2023-24 annual membership renewal statements will be sent to all members next week. After five years of frozen AMA membership dues, the Board has decided to increase dues for some membership categories. This will help the AMA to continue providing support to members in these increasingly challenging times.
Last week, Minister LaGrange announced that Alberta Health Services has signed a memorandum of understanding with the ownership of Dynalife, which will see the private provider (Dynalife) transfer all of its staff, operations and physical locations in the province to the government-owned Alberta Precision Labs by the end of 2023.
This is another brief update on activity. There has been daily contact with government and AMA senior staff. There have been meetings between primary care physician leaders (Section of Family Medicine, Section of Rural Medicine, Primary Care Networks Physician Leads Executive) and the minister.
Alberta Health has released a bulletin regarding fee-for-service retroactive payments under the agreement. This is the second retroactive payment for the 2022-23 year. It covers the period December 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. Payments will be made Friday, August 18. Read the bulletin here.
You will have received an Income Equity Initiative Update from our AMA Compensation Committee Co-Chairs yesterday. I am writing to encourage members to review this update including the linked videos.