Acute Care Alberta extends contract with private surgery clinic at centre of conflict of interest probes

Janet French · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 30, 2025 9:02 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

The Alberta bureau overseeing acute attraction has granted a six-month declaration hold to a backstage surgical session whose erstwhile provincial authorities contracts are the taxable of respective ongoing probes.

In a $1.7-million wrongful dismissal suit filed successful February, ousted erstwhile AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos alleges she received governmental unit to renew contracts with chartered surgical facilities (CSFs) that she believed were overpriced. Her suit alleges she had been fired aft launching an probe into assorted contracts with links to authorities officials.

Alberta's auditor general, Alberta Health Services (AHS) and a retired Manitoba justice appointed by the state are among the agencies investigating the province's wellness procurement and contracting processes.

Mentzelopoulos raised concerns about several issues with antithetic contracts, including a orthopedic country declaration signed with an Edmonton-based company, Alberta Surgical Group (ASG). She alleges AHS was paying higher rates per process compared to other vendors.

Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange and AHS person filed statements of defence successful the Court of King's Bench, denying the allegations. They said Mentzelopoulos was fixated connected suspicions of wrongdoing, and lasting successful the mode of the government's program to restructure Alberta's wellness system.

Mentzelopoulos has refuted these claims. 

Neither Alberta Surgical Group, nor immoderate of the company's owners, responded to requests for remark astir the declaration hold connected Wednesday. The institution has antecedently denied immoderate conflicts oregon wrongdoing.

Health curate says Edmonton needs surgical capacity

When the allegations became nationalist successful February, an AHS spokesperson said the authorization had paused the awarding of surgical contracts nether review, past aboriginal clarified that the intermission was constricted to "new surgical contracts."

ASG was nether declaration from November 1, 2022, to April 30, 2025, to execute orthopedic surgeries successful the Edmonton area. The maximum worth of the declaration for the full clip play is listed astatine astir $70.5 million, but details of each procedure's outgo are redacted from the publically posted agreement.

On April 1, the authorities transferred the authorization to motion surgical contracts implicit to the caller Acute Care Alberta agency, which volition beryllium liable for overseeing hospital-based attraction and CSFs successful the province.

On Monday, LaGrange's property caput said Acute Care Alberta had extended ASG's declaration for six months.

In the legislature connected Tuesday, Premier Danielle Smith said the galore ongoing investigations had delayed the startup of a caller backstage surgical centre scheduled to unfastened connected the Enoch Cree Nation, conscionable westbound of Edmonton.

"We're not going to cancel thousands of surgeries for hep and genu replacements," she said.

LaGrange told reporters Wednesday the Enoch installation had already won a bid to supply surgeries successful the Edmonton country erstwhile it was up and running, which it is expected to beryllium successful 2026.

Her property caput said successful a connection that extending the declaration with ASG for six months gives Acute Care Alberta clip to decorativeness declaration negotiations with Enoch, and allows retired Manitoba Justice Raymond Wyant's government-ordered probe to conclude.

LaGrange said Wednesday the province needs to support thousands of surgeries going astatine ASG to tackle the agelong hold times for orthopedic procedures.

"While we are completing implicit 60 per cent [of surgeries] successful clinically approved times, we privation that fig to get to 100 per cent," she said.

Cost of declaration hold not public

The details of the declaration aren't yet public. Alberta Health Services has posted copies of erstwhile CSF contracts online, including details specified arsenic the estimated full cost, and the maximum outgo the vendor tin complaint for services.

Neither LaGrange nor Acute Care Alberta would accidental however overmuch the declaration is for, the outgo per procedure, oregon the measurement and benignant of procedures ASG is expected to perform.

Acute Care Alberta spokesperson Holly Budd said a mentation of the declaration volition beryllium posted publically erstwhile it is "fully executed."

LaGrange said Alberta is moving to a wellness backing exemplary wherever work providers are paid based connected the measurement of enactment they bash partially to shed much airy connected the outgo of care.

NDP wellness professional Sarah Hoffman told reporters Wednesday it is "completely inappropriate" for a provincial bureau to widen a declaration with ASG portion truthful galore related investigations are underway. Hoffman said wellness agencies had clip to formulate a backup program to supply surgeries elsewhere.

"We person infirmary operating rooms that aren't moving afloat capacity. They could unit up and decently determination guardant with nationalist wellness care, but they're choosing to proceed afloat velocity up astatine privatization, and that's wrong," she said.

While criticizing nationalist hospitals' quality to implicit much surgeries, the authorities has besides made it much hard for AHS to bash procedures, Hoffman said,  including an unwillingness to wage for overnight sum for patients to person associated replacement surgeries astatine the Royal Alexandra Hospital's Orthopedic Surgical Centre.

Keeping concealed the details of the contracts besides fosters nationalist distrust, Hoffman said.