Tom Beaulieu

Hopefully, by the time we look at the cost of trying to get a residence in Hay River we would have the new health centre functioning with doctors and midwives, hopefully. But I have no issue with looking at the possibility and examining what the costs of Vital Abel are and what it would cost to provide that service for Hay River.

We don’t, beyond what is indicated in our business plan now, have in our mains more money targeted in here. However, we are working with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment in the early childhood development. Some of that money could be used to expand Healthy Families beyond what we have laid out, which would, I think, include most communities where there are a number of births.

We have allocated $13,000 to the Sahtu Health and Social Services for equipment under $50,000. In addition to that, the department has $3.1 million in the capital budget for minor medical equipment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services recognizes, and also in discussion with many people recognize that bariatric surgery and other issues or other medical services that could address obesity are something that we are looking at adding to our insured services. Thank you.

We do get monthly reports from the current provider. There is a requirement within the current contract for that information to be gathered by the contractor and provided to our department.

It is not in this year’s budget, this year’s mains. We had not anticipated putting it into the 2014-2015 mains at this time. We don’t know what the cost of that would be at this time.

Mr. Chairman, the cost, just to provide some information, has gradually increased from 2007, about $3.6 million, to in 2011-12 about $4.1 million. In addition to that, I’ll have the deputy minister provide some details on the work we’re doing in the Pharmaceutical Management Strategy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe that we have examined the possibility of having a residence for expecting mothers here in Yellowknife to accommodate mothers from out of the communities.

We will revise or upgrade the standards to the standards of today. Those midwifery standards were community standards also developed in 2005. I’m assuming that even in Fort Smith we were planning on updating the standards, even with the one that’s operational in Fort Smith.

Also, the thought is that Hay River would become more of a regional midwifery operation, so that we’re going to look at incorporating the regional standards into this, and so that when we move to Inuvik we will have a lot of the standards developed. But then in Inuvik it’s going to be slightly different, because in Inuvik...

We have eight communities that don’t have nursing services at this time.