Alberta Health Services wants to hear from you as they work to plan for the delivery of health services for the next 15 years.

In person meetings were held in the Central Zone in late November and early December and now A-H-S has launched a public blog on their website inviting you to share your perspective on how health care could be structured in the future.

Chief Zone Officer with the Central Zone Kerry Bales says they do have some indication of what the health system will be up against down the road "we're seeing an aging population overall, Alberta as a province is growing.  What's possible to be done from a healthcare perspective is always becomming more and more complicated, and we just want to make sure that we are using our resources and our efforts to the maximum effect to support Albertans".

Projections also indicate more chronic health conditions.

Bales says he anticipates some challenges to be presented that are unique to Central Alberta "we're primarily working with communities that would be more rural than we would think of as large urban centers, so there's some unique things that come up from that, so we're expecting to hear things from people around the ability to acces service, travel, winter roads, those types of things, but that's exactly the type of feedback and input that we're looking for".

It's expected that health services in the future will be more community based and Bales says it's important to look at the full spectrum of care, not just acute care hospitals, to make sure people have access to specialty services like mental health.

If you would like to provide your input to Alberta Health Services, follow the link to AHS.