Tom Beaulieu

We began a media campaign in December to advise people that we’re moving to the system where their health care card expires on their birthday. These are health care cards that would have been in place for three years, and then expiring on their birthdays starting this year and then more in the coming years. What has happened is, because there have been issues where there are indications that individuals that are holding health care cards that are not eligible that are outside the province, we wanted to have a clean process when we transfer into the new system that we’re requiring that people...

Madam Chair, we will work on this as I agreed to do. I’ve only mentioned a few of the issues that we have to deal with. Even the privacy of individual files has to be something that we would deal with BC Health. We will try to employ the same type of systems that we do when we deal with Alberta Health and British Columbia, for the most part, but… As we do with Alberta, pardon me. For the most part, we will try to do that, but then BC Health also has their own regulations and restrictions on how they deal with patients. Those are things that we do have to deal with.

The Health and Social Services system is a fairly decentralized operation. We do try to place positions outside Yellowknife. We do that test each time there is a position that does not necessarily have to be located near the centre. In this case, as this position works with all authorities, it can be located anywhere the individual wishes to live, depending on who applies and who gets the actual job.

Unfortunately, if you show up with expired health care, you will not get insured coverage. However, you do have four months after that grace period to renew your health care card.

Madam Chair, yes, we can proceed with discussions with BC Health and then, from our findings there, we can then go back to Fort Liard for reasons of speeding up the process a bit.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Increase of four positions are three full time and one part time. Two positions, new positions from other sources. The Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative from Health Canada is a project manager, medical travel, Yellowknife; a policy officer, health benefits, Yellowknife; another position, internal transfer, resource, paid internally from existing resources, system navigator in Yellowknife. One position, a new initiative to develop clinical governance, is a chief physician advisor, which is actually a 0.75 full-time equivalent, Yellowknife.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The future long-term goal of the health structure, if we’re talking about structure as in personnel, physician services, other health services in the territory, we are hoping that we have a system that is where we have physicians that are available equally to all residents of the Northwest Territories. That’s ultimately our objective.

Now, we’re probably going to have a lot of difficulty providing medical services, as in physician services, on a full-time basis to all communities. That’s going to be something that we’re probably never going to achieve, and that is...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize two Pages from the Deninoo School in Fort Resolution: Rayleen McKay and Tianna Simon.

We will do everything we can to speed the process up with the understanding that this review is going to be cross referenced to insured services, appeal process, two parts of the health benefits review that need to be done with extreme diligence. The case file review is something that we’re currently using and will continue to use until there are changes in this health benefits policy. On a case-by-case basis, we will use the case file reviews in situations where we think that an individual, or an individual has come to us through some medium that they need to have a second opinion. Then we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The three pilot projects are for renal care, diabetes, and mental health and addictions.