Tom Beaulieu

I can’t see it being too difficult. We can provide a briefing note to the Member.

At this point we are thinking of approaching the midwives that are in Fort Smith to talk to us about how the program functions in Fort Smith. Right now the midwives have been doing deliveries in Fort Smith for the last several years, I think since 2005 when those regulations were developed for the community of Fort Smith. Now that they have doctors in Fort Smith, how that will change and how the system will work with doctors and how the system would work without doctors. The role of the midwives would be to give us the on-the-ground information on what works and what does not work. We’re...

Madam Chair, we can provide a general response. I will have the deputy minister do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have not received a request from the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority to provide this material. What we would be prepared to do is we could check with the authority, and then we will get a determination from them if they’re going to make a request for that. Then we will take it from there.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re looking for the infrastructure plan here. We have a little bit of detail on the capital plan with us. We are at the planning stages of the Stanton Territorial Hospital. We do have the dates on when we’re going to be rolling out the plan and when we’re going to start spending money, of course, in the actual renovation of the hospital, but that largely depends on the approval of the Legislative Assembly. I’m just going to… Bear with me, Madam Chair. The plan now is that prior to March 31, 2013, we’ll have spent $3 million on planning and in this fiscal year we will...

On this new system where we moved to birthdates, we have about 2,000 per month. The majority of them are processed, yes. A lot of the mailings went out after people’s birthdays, on the 21st of January actually, so we do have a bit of a glitch in the system. But, in reality, we didn’t see it as a huge issue, that most people will have their cards renewed. But if they don’t have their cards renewed then, yes, they will not get the service provided at that time. They can get a service and they can pay for it or else they can quickly get the card renewed.

Madam Chair, that would be one of the huge issues in dealing with BC Health in Fort Nelson. At this point, the electronic medical records are for the NWT, and then we have a long history dealing with Health in Alberta, in Edmonton. We have some compatibilities there, but none in British Columbia. So that would be an issue that would be a barrier that we would have to deal with.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The plan is to have three of the positions – the project manager, the policy officer, and the system navigator – in Yellowknife. Just a little explanation. The one project manager is the review of medical travel. The policy officer is a review of the health benefits and will also be located here. The system navigator, located in Yellowknife, is the person in charge of handling all of the issues that are brought forward to the system. The chief physician advisor, although we indicate Yellowknife, could actually be located anywhere in the Northwest Territories.

Madam Chair, this response needs to have a lot of detail in it because of things that we’re doing. So I’m going to ask the deputy minister to provide a detailed response on this whole question, and perhaps the director of finance may also add to the response. I’ll ask the deputy minister to start off the response.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. There are some issues with mailing, but I think that the majority of the people that went for renewal have had their health cards renewed without any issues.

There are some issues. To answer her question of how far behind we are in this is difficult for me. I can say that we did change the system just a bit by mailing out postcards as opposed to forms, and that has caused a little bit of an issue. Aside from wrong addresses, I think we’re fairly up to speed on our renewals.