Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know what the waiting time is for the long-term care in Inuvik. I don’t have the waiting list with me at this time.

Right-sizing the budget is probably going to be part of the review.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We are currently reviewing the Medical Travel Policy, the entire program. We do feel that there are some issues with the program and we are reviewing it. We have our staff in place now that will be doing a review of the program.

As far as physician costs, Stanton Hospital is a territorial hospital, so it does provide service to all of the other communities and they’re budgeted for that reason. As far as that creating a deficit, that does create a bit of a deficit, but it’s getting a lot better in the last couple of years. The deficit has gone down considerably.

Thank you. I would commit to a complete overhaul of the system, but we are looking at all of the areas, including this area. Like I indicated in the House many times, we’re looking at what it takes to keep patients in their home as long as possible before they go into long-term care. When they’re in long-term care, then we provide some physio. When they’re in extended care, we provide some physio and so on. So there are some things being done.

There are some gaps, there’s no question about it, and so we’re looking at the whole system to make sure that we can fill the gaps. Thank you.

Thank you. I see the HPV advertisements on the television, I notice that they’re put on by the Nunavut government and I don’t know that the Government of the Northwest Territories has the same type of campaign for HPV. But I know that awareness of the types of cancer that we find most prevalent are the ones that we’re trying to campaign as in colorectal, prostate and lung cancer for men, and colorectal, lung and breast cancer for women. Thank you.

The Member will be able to see it as a line item in the capital plan once it goes through the capital planning process in this House.

The decision was made to build a new health centre and the decision was made not to have the new health centre be a home for people to live in. The long-term care beds were not incorporated into the new health care centre. Unfortunately, the long-term care beds were not incorporated into any other location. I’ve committed to the Member that we’re going to look at it. We’re not going to leave individuals that require long-term care that are in H.H. Williams Hospital now out in the cold. We will find a place for them within Hay River if at all possible.

I’m assuming that the Member has the information that those rates of exams or tests are lower than in the larger centres. I don’t have that information here. I think the standard, when we try to do cancer awareness or try to do early detection, is to try to do something that’s standard across the territory, except for in situations where communities are considered to have a spike in cancer rates in their specific communities. We try to work with those communities to look at all the cancer rates, but the standard is that we are supposed to be applying the same across the Territories regardless...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health does a lot of work in the cancer area, and the department has developed a cancer awareness and response strategy that was funded during this fiscal year, and we have been doing work in various areas under the chief public health officer. I guess that’s how we’re trying to respond to the cancer awareness. Thank you.

Yes. I would commit to completing the assessment for the need of long-term care beds in Hay River and try to move that to the capital planning process as soon as possible.