EDMONTON — The Alberta government took a major step Thursday to reshape health-care delivery by dissolving nine existing regional health boards and creating a new super board.

“What we are attempting to put in place is a governance model ... that can give us better access and a more sustainable system,” Health Minister Ron Liepert said.

It’s the latest move by the Alberta government to reform health care. In 1995-96, it got into a fight with Ottawa over extra billing, which cost the province $3.4 million in penalties. Thousands of people protested in 1998 when the government introduced Bill 11, which allowed for the expansion of private clinics.

Then, in 2006, the Tory government introduced its “Third Way” of health care, proposing to let patients pay for faster access to some procedures and allowing doctors to work in both the public and for-profit systems.

But public outcry forced the government to back away from those proposals.

Premier Ed Stelmach said earlier this week that Albertans believe there are too many pencil-pushers in health care, so money saved on administration will go towards treatments.

“We heard a lot about the perception that there’s this huge administration in health-care delivery,” Stelmach said Wednesday.

He was vague on how many administrative jobs might be cut.

“We’ve reduced 127 board members to just five or six on the new board,” said the premier, pointing out that total administration costs are less than four per cent of the $13 billion annual health budget.

Government members have been grumbling for years about the million-dollar salaries and benefits for the CEOs of health authorities in Edmonton and Calgary, as well as the dozens of public health-care executives earning between $250,000 and $400,000.

But Capital Health president and CEO Sheila Weatherhill says she’s not expecting to see a major reduction in the number of administration jobs in Edmonton.

Liepert confirmed Thursday that the new governance model will mean that the current CEOs will in effect become chief operating officers, which may require a salary review.

Suzanne Marshall of the Friends of Medicare says with executive salaries in Alberta’s health authorities escalating rapidly over the past several years, some of these people may have priced themselves out of a job.

In the 1990s the province created 17 regional health authorities to replace dozens of hospital boards across Alberta.

The province then decided to have some health authorities members elected, but elections were later scrapped and the number of health authorities was eventually reduced to nine.