Dear Members,
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.
Ongoing advocacy activities are also raising your issues with the public. Your messages are being noticed, your ads are being read, your supporters are growing in number, and we are not slowing down. Here is a short progress report to date.
Informed Reform advertising campaign
Billboard and digital advertising have been rolling out and in the first 14 days (October 1-15), your ads appeared 400,000 times online and reached 106,000 Albertans. 5,300 individuals signed up to help and those people collectively sent almost 4,000 emails to MLAs in support of informed reform as well as to advance the Physician Comprehensive Care Model and Acute Care Stabilization proposal. Mid-month we added a video to the digital advertising. We are adding more rural locations for billboards and campaign resources online in the weeks ahead. You are gaining supporters in all parts of the province. We are just getting started.
PatientsFirst.ca online community
We are now marching toward 56,000 members in your online community of Albertans who want a better health care system. Beyond MLA contact and letter writing, the website is also supporting a survey that emergency medicine colleagues are using to help measure emergency department wait times and their impact. For the PatientsFirst.ca member community at large, we are measuring their health care experiences and their opinions, and we expect to open up this survey to all Albertans soon.
AMA platforms
Our social media platforms have been busy every day telling your stories, bringing forward Fact Checkup bulletins, highlighting the challenges of general internal medicine, and support for the PCCM and acute care. Last week we featured 24 hours in Central Zone and it attracted a lot of attention. Other zones are welcome to contact us for a similar campaign!
Please think about lending your voice. Here are some tips. It’s easy.
Thank you to members who have so far participated in the Local Doctors, Local Issues (member login required) town halls in Edmonton, Calgary and by Zoom this week. I am looking forward to engaging with South Zone members on Tuesday, November 5. This meeting is open to all South Zone members; if you are unable to attend in person, I encourage you to register and join the meeting via Zoom (member login required). With the South Zone Medical Staff Association annual general meeting taking place on Monday, November 4, we have cancelled the AMA town hall that was scheduled for that same evening. I’ll remind members as we get closer to the December dates for the town halls in Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray.
Sincerely,
Shelley Duggan, MD, FRCPC
President, Alberta Medical Association
It is past time. Politians need to listen to people in the medical community on what needs to be done to fix our health care instead of listening to politians that have never been involved in health care of any kind