Glen Abernethy

It would be inappropriate to talk about individual cases. But I can say that we do work with our residents of the Northwest Territories, and when they do have challenges with the NIHB benefits that they’re entitled to receive, we do participate with them. We do work with them by providing the doctors’ notes and everything they need, and those issues do get resolved. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just to confirm, the Member is talking about the CIHI at this point?

That actually falls under the out-of-territory hospitals expenses.

The work to set them up is actually occurring right now, but the money actually hasn’t been transferred. A supp will be coming to Committee of the Whole later, in the next couple of weeks. It’s a transfer from ECE. So we’re beginning the work now and when the supp is passed, the money will be there and the dollars will be used to create the program in Tuk. So it is going to be new in ’15-16. There is only a month and a half left in this fiscal year.

In this process we don’t want to dictate to any of the communities or regions what project would be appropriate for them. This is a community-driven initiative. So it’s what the community wishes to see and how the community wishes to see it unroll.

As I said to Member Blake yesterday, we’re there to add clinical advice and expertise if they seek it, and if they want some of our people there, we’re willing to participate as well. So if they want a youth program, they can have a youth program. Thank you.

I’m not aware of the overload in Tsiigehtchic but I’ll certainly take that under consideration, sorry, in McPherson, and I’ll certainly have a conversation with the public administrator of the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority to see if we can get that figured out.

It is certainly something that we’re looking at doing, but at the same time we’re engaged in a significant number of initiatives and every time we’re pulled off by committee or another group to do another analysis, another research project, it has to be done by the staff that we have and there’s a number of major priorities that were set by the 17th Legislative Assembly’s Caucus that we’re working on. We’re progressing and it’s in the queue and the work will be done. Thank you.

Yes, Madam Chair, we do believe that there will be opportunities to get some economies of scale and reduce some expenditures in some areas, but the overall price of delivering health care in the Northwest Territories continues to climb. We’re not going to turn patients away and the cost continues to climb. So we don’t see an overall savings in this activity, but we do see an opportunity to save in certain areas, have some economies of scale, control future growth of expenditures and make sure that we’re getting maximum benefit for all the dollars that we’re spending within the system. So, yes...

There are many reasons why there could be high rates of overtime in a community and the impacts of that overtime are certainly something that we need to be conscious and aware of on our staff, and we do have a Collective Agreement that articulates clearly how much time a person put in. There are mandatory rest periods and all these other things to ensure people are getting the down time that they need.

But the Member is right. Once we’re doing this work, depending on where we see the high rates of overtime, it should be able to help us focus in and start asking questions about why, what’s going...

Thank you. The Healthy Family Program will be moving to Tuk in ’15-16. It was based on a supp that occurred in ’14-15. The planning is occurring now, but there will be a Healthy Family Program in Tuk in ’15-16. I’d just like to add, that’s in partnership with the IRC. As I say often, a lot of these programs really benefit from partnering with community governments, Aboriginal governments as well as other people throughout the Northwest Territories. Partnerships really make these programs better and this particular one in Tuk is being done in partnership with the IRC.