Tom Beaulieu

Thank you. The Medical Travel Policy is a Cabinet approved policy. So at the end of the day, the policy, when an individual is requesting an escort, the request comes from the physician or the nurse. So a physician of some sort, the patient’s clinician I should say, would make the call and ask for an escort and then medical travel would then apply that request against the current policy. So the reality is the program has just been generally following the policy as set out by Cabinet, essentially. So this is why the commitments were made generally that everybody over the age of 65 years old...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. That is not the policy and, from what I understand, it was never the policy. We have been looking at medical travel, we’ve completed a report on medical travel. We see some issues in medical travel, we’re pulling medical travel from Stanton back into the department, but from what I can see, that has never been the policy. Thank you.

We get annually in excess of $12 million from the federal government on wellness funding. So what we’re hoping to do with the wellness plans to stay within the confines of bad budget, and as the wellness plans are developed and hopefully we do just a bit of internal movement, and we will be funding the wellness plans as we go. But the intention is to complete the wellness plans and then fund them as they’re completed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the breakdown by community right here just on the wellness funding, but how we funded the project is, we were looking at the federal funding for community wellness funding. In 2011-12 we carried over $500,000 from the federal funding to start this project, start to initiate the wellness plans across the communities. This fiscal year that we’re currently in, we’ve brought another $350,000 into this fiscal year to complete more wellness plans across the territory. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct; we are spending $2.2 million in Nats’ejee K’eh and we are operating at a bit below 50 percent occupancy. We want to look at Nats’ejee K’eh as part of a spectrum of treatment opportunities or treatment options that will be provided to the people of the NWT.

Having said that, what we are doing with the one treatment centre that we do have in place is we are again removing Nats’ejee K’eh from Deh Cho Health and Social Services. We are going to have some discussions with the reserve, of course, where Nats’ejee K’eh sits. That will be directly run through the...

Mr. Speaker, yes, it is in our plans to try to address the issues that are stemming from addictions in all of the communities right across the territory. That is built into our Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan. It’s part of the mandate of the Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness. As they travel around, they are to get enough information and ideas from the communities to be able to develop a solution. By May 1st we are hoping that we can have the report completed. We’re looking to address this probably region by region and even community by community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We think it’s important to make changes to the Medical Travel Policy. We have many issues with the policy. We actually know of cases where individuals that didn’t speak English were sent to Yellowknife or even Edmonton where they said translation could be provided. Clearly, in the Medical Travel Policy it says that a patient would require an escort if they needed translation. We have some issues with the policy on how it is being applied so we want to centralize back into the department. It is essentially done for the whole territory out of Stanton and I think out of...

Thank you. We confirm that two previous Health Ministers had said that anybody over 65 years old would get a medical travel escort. However, the policy does not indicate that. That was never written down. It was said in the House. It’s fairly clear in which case we allow non-medical escorts for patients, but age is not one of the factors. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, like I’ve indicated, I don’t have the community-by-community breakdown of that budget, but I suspect that if the wellness plans are completed that on April 1st they would be able to start funding the plans. Thank you.

Our intention is to try to develop wellness plans for all of the communities. I think there will be wellness plans developed. Even in Yellowknife, it will be more complex, it will be working with non-government agencies. In some communities we just work with one body in the community where it’s simpler for us to do wellness plans. But the intention is for us to do wellness plans for all 33 communities. Thank you.