Southeast leads province in primary care metrics; Minister Wright hopes to export local wins to the province

Posted on August 13, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

By Zoe Mason
Southern Alberta Newspapers

During an appearance in Medicine Hat in late July, Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services Justin Wright highlighted the Palliser Primary Care Network as an example of one of the highest performing primary care units in the country. It’s a model he hopes can be exported to benefit other parts of the province.

“I really believe we’re going to have a made-in-Medicine-Hat solution that’s going to roll out to all the PCNs that is going to bring a standardization to the approach,” he told reporters.

In an interview with Southern Alberta Newspapers on July 31, Wright expanded on plans to use Medicine Hat as an example for PCNs across the province.

There are 97 physicians and nurse practitioners participating in the Palliser PCN. Together, Wright says those primary care providers serve 104,000 people, achieving an attachment rate in the Palliser catchment area of 94.5 per cent.

“Provincially, we are within the range of 82 to 84 per cent,” said Wright. “So they are very much an outlier, positively. That almost leads Canada.”

Primary Care Networks are one level of a multi-tiered health oversight model that has undergone several transformations as the UCP government implements its health-system refocusing.

Last month, the government announced implementation of regional primary care corridors. Each corridor will contain several more localized PCNs, which include doctors and other health professionals to help provide integrated care. There are 39 PCNs across the province, and more than 1,000 health-care providers are attached to a PCN.

When it’s done right, the PCN model can help reduce the administrative burden on clinics and co-ordinate care across disparate services. Statistics indicate Palliser is doing it right.

Over the past few years, Wright says some clinics participating in the PCN have been able to increase their panels threefold, jumping in some cases from 500 patients to 1,500.

Communication within the PCN is also strong. Across the province, an average of eight to 10 per cent of patients are recorded in the system under a conflict, meaning they appear on multiple practitioner’s panels. In the Palliser region, that number falls to only three to four per cent.

Other areas where the Palliser PCN excels is arranging hospital discharge follow-ups and flexible staffing that allows practitioners to help in community physician clinics.

“It’s a matter of finding some of these solutions that are working regionally and say, ‘OK, is this something that can work provincially?’”

Exporting the success of the south region means adopting some of these tactics. It also means implementing more standardization.

Wright says when he took over the portfolio, the de-centralized approach to PCNs left them with too little structure, leaving most of their operational decisions in that autonomous category.

“Eighty per cent of the work our PCNs do is going to be the same, and then 20 per cent will be challenges unique to the community,” he said. “We can leave the autonomy in place. But it shouldn’t be 80 per cent autonomy, 20 per cent consistency. It should be the opposite. We’ve really got to see that approach come back in line.”

The creation of the primary care corridors, which roll out Sept. 1, is an effort to address that lack of consistency, says Wright.

The province is currently boasting the highest number of physicians on record, with 6,456 family doctors and 6,755 specialists in other areas. It’s an improvement of 884 doctors over the end of the second quarter in 2025.

The South region has 355 family doctors and 283 other specialists, up by a total of 21 new physicians since this time last year.

While it’s a crucial step in the right direction, advocates warn that more personnel are still required to address system pressures, particularly in Alberta’s emergency departments.

The Alberta Medical Association’s annual State of Health Car report found only 53 per cent of Albertans report that they can get an appointment with their family doctor when they need one.

Private diagnostics

July 31 also marked the start of the province’s new self-referred private diagnostic testing.

Wright says private diagnostic clinics have historically operated outside the public wait list, and he’s optimistic they can help take pressure off the public system.

“We’re monitoring the rollout, and we’re going to be adjusting as needed.”

Wright says it could take as many as 50,000 patients out of the public queue.

Little information is available on the length of that queue. Wright says the ministry does not currently have plans to collect and share that number on the public health system dashboards.

Critics are concerned the influx of self-referral patients in the private system could divert resources away from public clinics.