Alberta's Symposium on Health 2005

Common Questions

What went on at the symposium?

Leading experts from Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, the United States and other countries outlined strategies that have been successful in improving health and health care for their citizens. Over and over, delegates heard about ways of fostering innovation in the health system along, analyses of public policy options and potential outcomes, and discussions on the values and principles underpinning system and program design.

What will happen as a result of the symposium?

Coming out of the symposium, Minister Iris Evans announced that the symposium reinforced her resolve to continue to make promoting wellness – particularly for children and youth, advancing primary health care, realizing improvements in mental health service delivery and making electronic health records a robust reality by 2008 would continue to be high priorities. Speaker after speaker highlighted these areas as core elements of high performing health systems.

Minister Iris Evans will meet with health regions and stakeholders over the next months to talk further about the lessons for Alberta. Albertans will be kept fully informed as priority areas for action are further developed.

Who attended?

The over 400 participants included broad representation from physicians, nurses, other health providers, the Health Boards of Alberta (health authorities), health consumers, academics, the Aboriginal community, healthcare associations, health law and health policy specialists, health care advocates and government organizations.

All Albertans have the opportunity to access the information presented at the forum. This includes archived webcasts and daily summaries.

Is there background information available to the public?

The symposium built on two landmark reports prepared by the Conference Board of Canada in 2004:

• Understanding Cost Drivers and Cost Escalators released in March 2004, compared Canada’s performance with that of 23 other OECD countries and found Canada to be the third highest per capita spender on health, but a middle-of-the-pack performer in areas such as health outcomes and system performance.
• Challenging Health Care System Sustainability: Understanding Health System Performance of Leading Countries was released in July 2004. The report examined various aspects of five OECD countries whose health system performance was deemed to be among the best by the OECD: France, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. New Zealand was also studied due to its superior performance on non-medical factors.