Statements in Debates
As I’ve previously committed in the House, we are doing a comprehensive review and modifications to the Medical Travel Policy, and these are the types of discussions we’re having and we’ll certainly continue to have them with the Member and his committee.
The exception requests are done on a case-by-case basis. They have to come from a practitioner, but in situations like this, if the Member identifies to the practitioner or the resident identifies to the practitioner the need and the situation behind, they can absolutely make an exception request and it will be considered seriously. Thank you...
Mr. Speaker, we are making the final preparations for our new Med-Response clinical support line for community health workers. This innovative project is a priority in the Department of Health and Social Services’ strategic plan and advances the 17th Legislative Assembly’s goal of ensuring a fair and sustainable health care system. It uses technology to connect people with services and it will be an important part of our effective, efficient health system.
The new Med-Response service will provide community health care workers throughout all Northwest Territories regions with a single phone...
The resident who happens to be utilizing the services would have to work with the practitioner and then we would follow the normal medical travel process with respect to the exception request.
If a resident comes to Yellowknife, happens to get sick and is admitted to the hospital and then has to be transferred to another hospital in their home community, they would actually be covered. It’s when the individual is discharged or free to go where this is a situation. The resident would have to work through their practitioner and follow the normal medical travel process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Medical Travel Policy is for patients who require medical travel to the nearest location where necessary and appropriate insured services are available, so if a resident were to travel to Yellowknife from a community or from outside of Yellowknife and they happened to get sick while they’re in Yellowknife, there is no transportation required to bring them to the closest location where the insured services can be provided because they already happen to be in Yellowknife. If the patient is then discharged and is able to travel on a commercial flight, there is no...
Thank you. Recognizing that we have eight health and social services authorities in the Northwest Territories, each with their own unique challenges and their own unique realties, some being all community-based, some being more regional centre-based, some being hospital-based, like Stanton, each one of them has developed their own policy or their own procedures around trying to encourage people to attend their appointment. One thing we do, and all the authorities do, is I know that they do encourage people to let the authorities know, or the practitioners know, when they’re not going to be...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will certainly get some more detailed information for the Member on this, but one of the challenges we face getting data from other authorities is the fact that every authority in the Northwest Territories is operated on different IT/IS/IM systems, they have different accounting systems, but we will continue to work with the authorities to get that information and I will provide some more detail to the Member once I get it from the department. Thank you.
I am aware of a situation that has come up recently very similar to the one the Member is describing and it was referenced in that discussion that there used to be a fund that provided supports very similar to the type that the Member is talking about. That fund no longer exists. But it is one of the items that I’ve put on the agenda for the Ministers’ Social Envelope Committee and we will be having further discussions, and I look forward from committee as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. It would be very difficult to give an exact dollar figure for that because the reason an individual might not attend an appointment or, rather, the appointment the individual misses may have a significantly different cost than an appointment that another individual misses. So, just having a number of missed appointments doesn’t really help us quantify it. We would have to dig in for each appointment, figure out what the procedures that were supposed to be done would have been and work from there. This would take a significant amount of work. We do believe it’s significant.
I do agree...
Thank you. I don’t have any of those statistics in front of me today, but I’ll certainly get that information from the department and share with the Member.
As far as the travel clinics and whatnot, we have the same problem that we do here in Yellowknife. This is a big issue for us. We know there are significant costs on the system. I do know that the Member had a life previous to government where he was in health care outside of the public service, so I’d really be interested in his ideas and concepts for helping us improve the no-show rates. A number of things need to happen, we get that, and...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a few people, as well, and I’d like to start by recognizing a couple of the Pages here from the Great Slave riding: Isabel Wilson and Joseph Cameron. I’d like to thank you both for everything that you’ve done for us over the last couple of weeks. We truly appreciate what all the Pages do for us. I’d also like to recognize a constituent, Mark Salvor. Nice to see you in the gallery.
Yesterday I made a statement in the House about a cancer video that will be premiered in the Great Hall later today and I’d like to recognize Charlie Furlong, who is in...