Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Interestingly enough, Mr. Bouchard and I are on the same page today. I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services and they are also about nurse practitioners. It was last June and also when we were deliberating the budget a year ago last February that there was quite a bit of talk about nurse practitioners and funding nurse practitioners, using them and so on. At that time in June, the Minister of Health and Social Services talked about a lack of doctors and using nurse practitioners. He mentioned that there were funding obstacles and it’s the difficulty with FMB, I gather, but at that time in June, the Minister, I take it from Hansard, promised us a plan. I just have heard the Minister say that there is currently no solution and that we’re waiting for a business case from authorities. So I’d like to know from the Minister along the lines of what Mr. Bouchard has just asked. We’re getting a business case at the end of April, I think the Minister said. Could he clarify that? Is this business case coming from the authorities or is it coming from the departments? What are we expecting and from whom at the end of April? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said I would ask the authorities to provide the Health and Social Services with a business case by the end of April. Just for lack of not having the information and feeling that there’s been plenty of time for the authorities to put that information together, I’m suggesting that that would be a good date for them to provide the business case to us. As soon as the business case is in our hands, then it would not take us long to maybe have one discussion with the Joint Leadership Council, and then over to the Financial Management Board to see if the funding for physicians can become flexible. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. My next question I was going to ask him was whether FMB had given any consideration to changing the policy and, obviously, they have not if it hasn’t gone to them already. So I need to ask the Minister if last June, that’s over six months ago, almost eight months ago now, if last June the Minister was promising us a plan to deal with this lack of flexibility, why has it taken this long to get to a point of no solution. Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t know why it’s taking this long, but I do know that we have a governance system where the health and social services authorities operate with a board, independent board or through a public administrator. So we are trying to set up a system now where we’re changing the governance.
As we stand up in the House here as Health Ministers to answer questions, there’s something that’s a little bit out of our control and that is that the management of the authorities. So we ask the authorities, we’ll work with the authorities and try to get that information. I will put appropriate pressure on them to get that information to us quickly. Thank you.
I want to thank the Minister, although I’m not quite sure I appreciate his response. However, I’ll look at Hansard tomorrow and check it out.
One of the other concerns that I have with nurse practitioners is the way that we fund them, and my understanding is that we have about nine nurse practitioners that we as a government are funding. I’d like to ask the Minister how these nine NPs are funded. Are they all funded from the base funding from the department or are some of them funded by federal funding? Thank you.
Thank you. Nine of the nurse practitioners are funded through the THSSI, the Territorial Health Systems Sustainability Initiative. That’s federal funding. The rest of them are funded through O and M. So not through any other funding other than just regular O and M through the health and social services authorities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the Minister said we have nine that are funded by THSSI funding. I thought we had nine in total. So I’d appreciate clarification on how many NPs we have. But of these nine NPs who are funded through THSSI funding, what is the Minister doing to ensure that when THSSI funding runs out, I think in a year, that we will be able to continue these nine nurse practitioners within our system? Thank you.
Thank you. I apologize, I thought I said six of the NPs were funded through THSSI, and it is six NPs funded through THSSI. The plan is to, of course, continue to negotiate with the federal government on sustaining that funding. If that funding is no longer available, if that funding has been eliminated, then the department would have no option other than to go through this process of going through the mains to be able to see if we can’t get funding to retain our nurse practitioners in the system. So at this time our hope is that that funding will continue. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
