Tom Beaulieu

No, we have not taken this report out. We’re looking at some of the key recommendations in there. There were about four or five key recommendations in there that we are looking at closely before we take it out to the public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In early 2012, Alberta Blue Cross completed an analysis and report on the NWT pharmaceutical strategy policy options for the Government of the Northwest Territories. This included a number of observations and recommendations to the government.

I don’t have the costs here. I’m sure that we would be able to determine the cost of what it would be when someone misses an appointment, but this is a missed appointment for an individual that doesn’t show up at the doctor’s office and a percentage of that time will come down to a cost. Sometimes they replace the patient with a waiting list, but what I can do is develop a cost for the percentage.

That percentage was a percentage that came from medical travel. It was all medical travel that includes the medical travel within the territory coming to Yellowknife, going to Inuvik, or also...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Medical travel is a clinical decision, first of all. Secondly, the policy is that medical travel, from the office here in Yellowknife, does contact the authority; the authority contacts the patient. The patient would then contact medical travel and make the arrangements for the travel and to make it to the appointment. It should generally be a fairly simple process. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we can take a look at the patterns of where the infections are occurring and correlate them to whether or not they are caused by overcrowding.

Overcrowding is probably the number one factor to the spread of this infection. I can talk to not only the Minister of the Housing Corporation but also other Cabinet colleagues on this issue to try to address that as soon as possible. Thank you.

We do recognize it. The department is monitoring the fact that we’re expecting an increase of 44 percent from this year, once we project to the end of the year over last year. There are definitely things that have to occur, and those things are, again, trying to work with the communities and trying to really pinpoint where the issue is greatest. We know that in the Tlicho Community Services Agency we are working closely with them to address the issue of our high rates of MRSA in that region. Any area where we consider there to be high rates by community, we will work closely with them to try...

By knowing where the incidents are and monitoring this infection, we are in a sense, I guess, tracking. That is what is happening. We also are projecting to see if we can predict what is happening and try to do some prevention work. We are continuing to examine the patterns and the causes of this infection through the NWT, by monitoring the cases that are being reported. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “NWT Health Care Services 2012 Client Satisfaction Questionnaire.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

For this fiscal year, ’12-13, the intention was to look at the money that we have in the various programs now, the money that we have in on-the-land programs for healing, some of the money that we get from Health Canada for wellness, and also the $6 million. It’s a total of about $9 million when you look at treatment and everything in the system. We’re thinking of looking at that money through counselling and so on, to try for us to build on this plan and then make a decision whether or not we think that if we can’t fund everything internally, then we’ll go back through the business planning...

I’ll try to answer it again. December 12th is the time that we’re hoping to have the forum finalized. The purpose of the forum is to travel to the communities or have those individuals from the communities travel here. We still haven’t finalized that. We’ve had to start to rethink how we’re going to do it, but the purpose of it is to gather information on addictions. Thank you.