Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yesterday I actually talked in some detail about the medical travel modernization, and the Medical Travel Policy has gone to the Standing Committee on Social Programs who has given it back to us with a number of comments and whatnot. We’ve started to make those changes and we’re going to be submitting that to Cabinet for consideration. Once it’s approved, we will have the foundation document, which is the base Medical Travel Policy. Of that, based on discussions I’ve had with committee earlier, there’s going to be a number of pillars that connect on to that Medical Travel...

Mr. Chair, as I have already indicated, some of the training that is ongoing around non-violent crisis intervention, security staff is involved. They are also involved in the second level of the non-violent crisis intervention training which actually has a larger component around some of the restraint protocols and how to do it safely and effectively.

Stanton has been working closely with the security agency. Effective Monday morning, there’s going to be different security officers in the facility with additional training from their current employers – one additional with a higher level of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is actually the first year that we’ve actually started to see some impact in this particular area. The budgets have always been sufficient. We are starting to see some real pressure, but in order to make a forced growth submission we actually have to have some statistics showing the actual increase of costs over a little bit of time, but until this year we haven’t had those challenges. We’re starting to see it now, so we’re going to make a forced growth case for it.

The nurses that are located in the psych unit as well as in the emergency unit are trained in non-violent crisis intervention. There are a couple different parts to non-violent crisis intervention, but all the nurses that are in those units, from what I understand from Stanton, they have actually received the training. There are also refreshers on a regular basis. There’s a second level of training, and we’re actually working with the security providers in Stanton right now as well as the others to get some of our people, including some of the security staff into the second level of the NVCI...

Thanks. The Member is exactly right. There are increasing numbers of seniors in the Northwest Territories and we are actually projecting increased costs to our already existing budget but we’re in the process of trying to monitor that and figure out what those costs are so that we can project them effectively given that we have a growing population. I imagine at some point, once we get a better grasp of what those future costs are going to be, we will be coming back to the FMB as well as to committee.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just to go back in time, there was never any money budgeted for midwifery services. Yellowknife Health and Social Services chose to re-profile some of their internal funding and they created a Midwifery Program that was only funded for one position. I don’t believe one position makes a midwifery program. In fact, I would suggest it would be dangerous for the incumbent to have a one-incumbent-based midwifery program because they would get burnt out.

In the proposed design in the midwifery report it suggests that for a territorial program based out of Yellowknife there would...

Just going back to the first part of the comment before the question, the $4.3 million estimate was based on the numbers obtained from the NWT Bureau of Statistics by the Supplementary Health Benefits Working Group in 2010, and it’s been updated for new information. But $4.3 million is the estimate, which, as a note, is a significant amount of money in these fiscally challenging times. I do believe, and I think many Members believe, that this is an area that needs some work, and I would like to see that work done, which is why I’d like to make it a priority for the transition document.

With...

Mr. Chair, it has taken a while to recruit, while we’re still proving to be unsuccessful in Fort Smith and we continue to move there.

We can’t recruit midwives in Yellowknife without job descriptions. Given that it’s going to be a territorial model and the midwives are going to have some responsibility not just in Yellowknife but on a territorial level, it is going to require different job descriptions because the scope of work is going to be different. We need to have job descriptions. We need to outline and clarify what that scope of work is going to be and how it’s going to work so we can...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Medical physicians, family practitioners are actually trained to provide this assessment, as well, so if they’re working with somebody who’s in a medical detox and it’s determined that the person is now fit and they have concluded their medical detox, they can choose to discharge them or offer them other options that might be appropriate for them given their current situation. If they think the person has some psychiatric problems, they can refer them to a psychiatrist.

There are two positons at Stanton by way of example, but we’ve also got distant psychiatry and a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It still exists; it’s still ongoing. We have speech-language pathologists come into all the communities in the Sahtu on a regular basis, but they’re also providing follow-up services through telehealth and they’re partnering with the schools. So, it’s a great relationship that we have with Education, Culture and Employment and the individual district education authorities to actually help facilitate that. We’re very excited by that partnership and that relationship that we have there and we’re happy that we’re able to get it in.

The department is doing an evaluation of...