The media is currently swirling around the issue of CEO Stephen Duckett’s controversial dismissal from the Alberta Health Services board. Angrily pushing off reporters and interviews while asserting he was eating his cookie, Ed Stelmach definitely did not sympathize with Duckett’s behaviour and termed it “offensive.”
Now three members from the AHS board have resigned in protest to Duckett’s dismissal, as Tony Franceschini, Gord Bontje and Linda Hohol claim Duckett’s behaviour regarding a cookie does not affect his performance as the CEO of the Alberta Health Services. However, a comparison in an article in another newspaper, 24 H, has Alberta doctors optimistic about Duckett’s discharge. Dr. Patrick White, President of Alberta Medical Association claims that this opens up the new opportunity for a fresh start.
But what does this all mean for Alberta healthcare, particularly on the focus of the long emergency-room wait times? I delightfully read an entirely different perspective, made by DJ Kelly in Metro Calgary, critically imploring that the consequences of Duckett’s notice of removal may be in vain.
Avoid focusing on the remixes of Duckett’s cookie remarks provided on the Internet and all the hilarity dies down when Albertans must realize that the Albertan government is potentially endangering the lives of patients in critical condition. What does firing Duckett accomplish? Anything else but addressing the issues of longer ER waiting times. The healthcare system definitely could use some improvements, but now the AHS must find a replacement for Duckett and spend some extensive labour on training someone new. If you compare ER waiting times now and a week a later, the times will probably be the same, so any attention to considering improvements to the healthcare system will now be directed to navigating through the AHS’s newly created political minefield. Had Duckett’s cookie eating habits affected his decisions on shortening ER wait times? No, it had not, and unlike the AHS currently, had been trying before the incident involving the cookie.
Personally, Duckett’s behaviour was extremely rude and unacceptable, especially in front of cameras, but a press conference was going to occur 30 minutes after his ambush by reporters and interviewers, and he wouldn’t have had a cookie then. Accountable to the media yes, but has this incident been blown out of proportions? A Calgary Herald article reporting the consequences of the post cookie incident would argue that it has. I’m pretty sure the act of eating a cookie does not affect his leadership in AHS. The AHS would not have hired an incompetent leader to head the biggest medical organization in Canada, as that’s just too many lives to take into account. Stephen Duckket was leading tremendous work regarding the healthcare system, and now he’s being paid severance pay of $680,000 – which taxpayers will have to be accountable to. He could have been given the same salary for continuing to do his job and something for the healthcare in Alberta. I’m pretty sure Albertans have other bigger issues to worry about than a poor man trying to eat his cookie in peace.
I would also like to point out to another fellow blogger’s comment on a similar article discussing Stephen Duckett’s “resignation”: Stephen Duckett is a health economist from Australia overlooking the health expenditures of the superboard. Stephen Duckett is entitled to eating his own choice of food if he is aware of his own health. Cookies do not send people into the ER.
Information sources: Metro, 24 H, the Calgary Herald
