Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Speaker, that is an issue, there is no doubt about it. We don’t have the nurses that can go out to a site. If there is an accident or anything right now, the nurses are not the people that end up at the site. I think it has happened in the past, but there are some barriers to nurses going out, leaving their stations to go out to an accident site or a location or to somebody who may be very sick. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are various programs available to train first responders. The Government of the NWT has developed an interdepartmental advisory committee that is actually led by MACA that includes the Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, and Health and Social Services. We are looking at all of the various areas to see what would be the best way to provide that type of training to possible first responders in the communities. Thank you.

The Department of Health and Social Services is working on what we’re referring to as a continuum of care living services for seniors. We are looking first at trying to keep the seniors in their home as long as possible, by providing support such as home care and then moving to assisted living. The next level that we’re working with NWT Housing Corporation and then, I guess, at the end if there are no other options that can keep the people in their home communities, then our last option is to move them into long-term care.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize the social work students from Aurora College, Kelly Bothamley and Jacqueline Brasseur, as well as their instructor, Susan Fitzpatrick, for the Social Work Program.

I’d also like to recognize the Page from Lutselk’e, Darian Marlowe.

I agree that medical travel is more of travel where the costs at one time used to be costed out or spent or expended authority by authority, but Stanton is running the medical travel. The Stanton Territorial Hospital is running the medical travel and they’re saying that it does create part of their deficit. It’s a large chunk of their expenditures – the biggest chunk, actually, when we divide it into certain sections – but it is being reviewed. That’s the reason we have brought staff in to review it, to make sure that these costs that should be charged to other authorities are charged to other...

Thank you. Yes, we’d like to provide the same care to the people that have the same clinical needs. So if the clinical needs in one hospital are the same as the clinical needs in another hospital, then the care will be provided on an equal basis. Thank you.

Thank you. The outpatients are not given priority over in-patients. Again, all patients are prioritized. There are more outpatients, there’s no question about that. People in the hospital, mostly the extended care people, are receiving physiotherapy from one physiotherapist and we have seven physiotherapists that are doing the outpatients. So based on clinical need and also given priorities given to patients who are unable to go back to work because of issues where they would need some physiotherapy in order to get back into the workforce, but they’re not given priority over in-patients.

Mr. Speaker, this particular situation has occurred recently and has occurred in the past. We’ve responded to it in various ways. Right now there is no actual requirement for a nurse to go out and go onto the site of an accident, for example. We will, as a department, deal with this situation, because we would like to be able to respond as well. This is why we are looking at a possible way of trying to develop some first responders in the community that can do that work for us. We will work with the authorities and give direction to the authorities to work with our interdepartmental advisory...

Mr. Speaker, like I said, we are looking at that. We need to cost the whole project out. It would be a fairly expensive proposition, because inside the first responders, we are also talking about how we get to the individual, and that would mean ground ambulance. We are also talking about remote areas where it’s not coming by highway and how we’re going to be able to respond to that as well.

We need to examine this. We need to develop some cost implications to our decisions and then move forward from there. Thank you.

Any facility that is built by the department or by this government would have to go through the House. What we’re doing is looking at all the needs across the Territories and if there is a need for long-term care facilities, then we start working into the capital planning process with that need.