{"id":26772,"date":"2014-09-25T15:16:58","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T07:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=26772"},"modified":"2014-09-25T11:58:36","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T03:58:36","slug":"new-health-minister-promises-change-but-says-he-wont-radically-alter-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/25\/new-health-minister-promises-change-but-says-he-wont-radically-alter-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"New health minister promises change but says he won\u2019t radically alter the system"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stephen<\/a>
Stephen Mandel. Photo by Dave Cournoyer<\/a> \/ Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

EDMONTON\u2014Alberta\u2019s new health minister says there won\u2019t be massive reforms to the province\u2019s health care system but there will be changes in how things are done.<\/p>\n

Stephen Mandel says the department is spending \u201cenough money\u201d that he wants to know first and foremost why so many people have to wait so long for surgery.<\/p>\n

He says he wants to assess what the challenges are and how to fix them, adding he has some ideas but doesn\u2019t know how good they are.<\/p>\n

Mandel says it\u2019s likely that he will kill a plan from the former government of Alison Redford to create 140 family care clinics.<\/p>\n

He says he\u2019s not absolutely sure yet, but he says the clinics \u201chave a challenge in their history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandel was appointed to the portfolio by Premier Jim Prentice but does not hold a seat in the legislature, meaning he will have to win one in a byelection.<\/p>\n

The former mayor of Edmonton says it is crucial to examine the health care system to see how it\u2019s operating and how it can function better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s unacceptable that people have to wait months on end to get some kind of surgery,\u201d he told his first\u00a0news\u00a0conference as health minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I have a person who worked for me in my previous life and she had to wait nine or ten months until she got back surgery. She had been in a lot of pain. I don\u2019t think the system that\u2019s costing this much money should have that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mandel says people shouldn\u2019t expect radical change.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s be fair, I\u2019m not going to change the entire\u00a0world\u00a0or totally renovate it by tomorrow morning but we\u2019ll do things over the next little while which we hope will make significant steps to reaching the goals which the premier set out for us,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a system in place. We need to work with that and I don\u2019t believe we should be looking to destroy that, what we need to look to improve it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON\u2014Alberta\u2019s new health minister says there won\u2019t be massive reforms to the province\u2019s health care system but there will be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}