Glen Abernethy

The individual that’s doing that assessment is one of the quality assurance people making sure that EMR is being utilized appropriately.

With respect to individuals accessing or abusing the information, I’m not actually aware of any situations. I will talk to the department to see if we have any evidence or suggestions that someone has breached files confidentiality.

As I’ve said to the Member before, if the Member is aware of a situation, it sure would be nice if he would be willing to share that information so we can get into the system to make sure no breaches are happening. We take all...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I said in the past when asked this question, we do have a number of protocols with respect to who has access to records, but we also do have a quality assurance professional that does review who is accessing files isn’t looking specifically at the files themselves, but is looking at and monitoring access. That person looks to see how many people are accessing, how often an individual might be accessing a particular file, will check to see if somebody has the same surname as the file is accessing it to make sure people are only accessing files they should. If and...

I don’t know if those types of statistics are kept. I will check with the department and get back to the Member. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There were two questions there, and I will try to answer both of them. The department works in partnership with the NWT Recreation and Parks Association to support training for community-based workers and activities that enhance independence and quality of life for elders. Research has identified several key areas to promote healthy aging, including physical activity and falls prevention, and falls prevention being of particular interest. In conjunction with Elders in Motion training gathering, the department and regional staff are developing a territorial falls...

I recognize from the Member’s earlier statements that obviously face to face is preferable. That is not always the case, but we do have an ability to have individuals call certain professionals and receive services by telephone or by telehealth. But it’s not just a matter of the professional provider. We are eager and interested in helping individuals within communities develop skills so that they can provide support to the individuals. One of the things that we are doing is Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, which we are offering across the Northwest Territories.

As you all know...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. With regard to the statistics related to attempted suicides, data would actually be incredibly difficult to collect because there are multiple diagnoses that an individual coming in who has attempted suicide or believed to have attempted suicide might come in with. Client diagnosis codes would often be related to the method of attempted suicide, how somebody chooses to attempt to take their own life. So, there would be multiple different codes that would be used. So, as a result, it would be very difficult to provide that information. Thank you.

I, like everybody else, have just received the report and will carefully consider the seven recommendations outlined by the coroner; however, I am not prepared to speak to those details yet because we haven’t concluded that review.

To the Member’s first part of the question, we would love to track medications and whatnot in order to avoid these types of issues, but as I said, there really is no system to do that or to require professionals to put that information into a prescription monitoring system until we complete the Health Information Act. Once we have the Health Information Act done, we...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We don’t actually have a mechanism to track prescription drug abuse at this point in time, but things are underway to try and address this particular concern, and it is a serious concern and we do need to address it.

Under the Pharmacy Act there is an ability to set up a prescription monitoring program, but due to privacy issues that we’re all aware of, we currently cannot require health care providers to enter information into the program. Because we cannot require health care providers to enter the information, we have not yet set up a program to monitor...

I’m not aware of any breaches in the system. Thank you.

With the EMR, it’s pretty much real time. The individual can access on a daily basis the records of how often, who and when individuals are accessing files. There are protocols that are flagged when an individual is accessing files. For example, someone who has the same surname, but also an individual accessing a related file time after time after time, as well as how long a particular file may be open to a particular user who has the authority to be there.

The quality assurance person makes those checks on a daily basis and monitors all files to make sure that people’s privacy is protected...