Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to be sure I understand the question, the question is about what’s the backup plan if a medevac can’t get into a community to pick up a passenger.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Yakeleya.
Madam Chair, maybe I could have expanded a little more on the question. That is the answer from the deputy minister, is usually a normal backup plan is to provide by the carrier. Sometimes that may not be the case. If one plane is not available, and another aircraft carrier is not available, then what is the backup, say, in the Sahtu region if the aircraft are not available and we have an aircraft company sitting in the Sahtu and just sitting at North-Wright in Norman Wells? Are they being asked to help with the medevac services for that period of time? Thank you.
Madam Chair, right now part of our contract for air ambulance service is what we call the triage and dispatch function. What the Member is referring to would be part of that whole complex decision-making process, if there is more than medevac required at a time, and looking at what is the most urgent, consultation with the emergency room in Stanton, consultation with medical personnel determining what patients can be stabilized. It is the responsibility of the contractor to find a way to get that patient out, though. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, I have some questions I’m going to give to the Minister and get some response to my questions. I have two more questions.
Why are there two budgets, one for the air carrier and one for the medical service when other organizations can provide a service that accounts for both in the pricing? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. One is an air carrier and one is for personnel services to support the air ambulance flights and so on. For a more detailed reason on why there are two separate contracts, I’d like to ask the deputy minister to provide a response.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not familiar with the details of why the RFPs were constructed the way they were when the current contracts were let. It may be that it was felt that was the way to get the most effective service and the best price. It is one of the issues that are being considered right now in constructing a new RFP. I think it’s very possible that you may see one in the future. It’s possible that one party could bid on both elements of the service. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to some of the rationale and to see where we go from there.
I want to ask the Minister, in light of the recent attention that the Sahtu is receiving with the oil and gas exploration activities and the number of workers coming into the region, when we’re looking at medevacs, it seems logical that a community such as Norman Wells would serve the Sahtu region and would be more stabilized in terms of medevacs for our region.
I want to ask the Minister, when the evaluation is being looked at, that the community of Norman Wells or the Sahtu is the hotspot or it could be with this type of service. Is that something the Minister is going to consider other than the pricing of this service? We’re looking at services now for the Sahtu region.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We are going to look at actuals on all of the medevac flights as we roll out the new RFP. The new request for proposals will have that type of information to support the RFP so that individuals who are bidding on the contract and companies that are bidding on the contract will know what is required of them, where the majority of the flights will be originating from. Definitely, if there is the exploration activity in the Sahtu, it nets a lot of additional medevac flights out of the Sahtu, then that would form part of the RFP and that would be considered in the evaluation of the RFPs.
I’m looking forward to the actuals in the evaluation. We’re looking at the quality of medical services in our community. I wanted to ask the Minister on the monitoring of how many medevacs, and the Minister said he would look at the actuals. How many medevacs in the community for each month, is it monthly, seasonal, or annually? How we are measuring ourselves? Right now there’s one carrier that does all the medevacs in the Northwest Territories. How do we measure that in terms of services? They might be quite busy; they might be doing a really good job. I’m not too sure.
Like I said, there are people in my region who said we could work together. Not one company can have everything. That puts us against them. That’s not fair. There are other airline companies that can also do the work, and they are up to the challenge. This is an opportunity to work together. I want to ask the Minister in terms of the trend of monitoring this medevac contract.
We do get monthly reports from the current provider. There is a requirement within the current contract for that information to be gathered by the contractor and provided to our department.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. I’m just going to call the page again, and then I have Mr. Bromley. Health and Social Services, operations expenditure, directorate, $8.599 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to follow up on a couple of my colleagues’ questions. Just on this most recent one, I know the Minister is aware of my thoughts on this. I was disappointed that the contract didn’t go out for RFP when it came due and that there was a decision made to extend that. I don’t know if there was an additional cost to that or not.
I think one of the issues that we’re raising is often we have small airlines that are based in our smaller communities, but without support they’re not able to maintain their services like they would otherwise be able to. Of course, since they’re already there, the service is better, the potential service is considerably greater. I don’t have any questions. I think my colleague Mr. Yakeleya asked the questions there, but I do want to underscore the same concern. I’ll look forward to this coming out in April and see what we can do on that front.
I also wanted to follow up on Ms. Bisaro’s question. I note under grants and contributions there is a difference of $70,000, and that is explained on the following page with a review of the Integrated Service Delivery Model that was done by the Hay River authority. Here it says that review was completed. My two questions are: Are we talking about the same review, or was this a separate review than the one that the Minister and Ms. Bisaro talked about? And can the Minister encapsulate the results of what was the main message we learned from that review?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I wasn’t clear on this. The review portion of the ISDM is complete. Right now the doctor that we have hired is doing the clinical services plan to develop or to upgrade or amend, I guess, the Integrated Service Delivery Model.
What I’m hearing is the review was completed, as stated on page 14, and in actual fact what is coming due in August this year is the clinical services plan, which takes off from the results of the review and addresses it, and that would be brought before committee. Am I correct there?
Yes, that is correct.
I think I will leave it at that. I am interested in results, but committee is there to deal with that. I’ll look forward to that.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Anything further on page 8-13, Health and Social Services, activity summary, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $8.599 million?
Agreed.
Page 8-14, Health and Social Services, activity summary, directorate, grants and contributions, $35,000.
Agreed.
Page 8-15, Health and Social Services, information item, directorate, active positions. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to ask the Minister, in terms of under the territorial health services division, if he’s got a plan in place for the oral health care, such as dental health for some of the smaller communities that don’t have those services, and if he would be willing to commit to having a more ongoing presence in the smaller communities, such as possibly creating some type of mobile dental unit.
Dental care services that are needed for some of the dental care in the small communities are not being addressed, and in some cases our dental hygienists are only going in for a day and coming out and not providing the proper services or quality of services to the small communities. I’d just like to see where the Minister is at with that.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We have some progress to report within the last month. I would like the deputy minister just to provide the details of the progress we’ve made in this area.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, this is a concern that is shared among all three of our territories, especially in areas where dental services are not readily available. We are having a harder and harder time to recruit dental therapists because the dental therapy school in Prince Albert was shut down.
Under the Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative, THSSI, there is a pot of money that is set aside for pan-territorial initiatives. We did propose with the other territories a co-operative project to hire staff. NWT will be the lead to look at developing a broad oral health strategy for remote communities. We were not able to do anything on this until Canada had signed off, but we do have agreement on this pan-territorial initiative.
We do have funding to hire staff for the next year to work on this. We do hope, with that funding, to come up with some cost-effective and, actually, meaningful on-the-ground initiatives that we can roll out in the small communities, in addition to some of the work that we already do. We do have a Dental Therapy Program. We do have many of our dental therapist positions filled, and we do do a fair amount of oral health work through the Healthy Families program and through the schools, but we know we need to do more. We are developing this strategy over the next year.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Moses.
Under the territorial health services division, and particularly with home care and home care with seniors and people with disabilities going into some of the communities, I know in Inuvik the home care staff do a great job of getting out to the communities, but they are being overworked in a sense to try to keep up to the demand of home care needs. I’m sure it’s similar in some other communities or smaller communities that might not even have the home care provided.
In terms of Inuvik specifically, does the Minister know if there is a need to increase the home care, either possibly a half PY or another full PY, to address some of the other home care needs that I feel are going not above and beyond but above the capacity that we have right now?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, we do need an increase in all of the home care. We are hoping to expand the home care services right across as part of the continuum of seniors’ care. We can provide perhaps some of the other financial details. For that I can ask the deputy minister to provide that.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We are in the last stages of negotiating a new agreement with Health Canada for our home care funding to kick in on April 1, 2013. We do understand that there will be a slight increase in the funding, probably from this year’s amount of $4.6 million to $4.7 million. We’re also being told that there’s likely to be an escalator, so we should see that amount increasing. In terms of actual plans to expand services, of course, we need to wait and see what our actual budget is going to be.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Moses.
Just staying under this division here, in terms of long-term care, I know in Inuvik we do have a waiting list of seniors that are requesting to get into the long-term care facilities and also looking at funding for the day program use. Kind of two questions, but the first one is: Does the Minister have a plan to address the waiting list of seniors wanting to get into the long-term care unit within the regional hospital? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you. To introduce more long-term care beds is a capital item, but we are working on that. So just to indicate what type of work we’re doing, I guess leading up to the need for more capital, I again ask the deputy minister to provide some detail.
Thank you. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. As Members are aware, in our capital plan now we are expanding the number of beds that are available at the Jimmy Erasmus Centre in Behchoko. We do have capital funding to construct long-term care beds in Norman Wells and those will be the first beds available in the Sahtu. That will take some pressure off existing long-term care facilities.
At the same time, as I believe the Minister had indicated last week, we are just putting the finishing touches on a request for proposals that should be going out within the next two weeks in which we’re asking for an overall strategic plan for the continuum of care.
We realize that there are gaps in service. We realize that we need to do everything from working in partnership with the Housing Corp to do more supportive living, to expanding elders’ day programs, to eventually expanding services for when people do need to be in long-term care facilities. So part of that project will be updating the estimates based on demographics of what our long-term care needs will be over the next 25 years so that we can make sure, through the capital planning process, we continue to address them. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Moses.
Thank you. Then just moving into another area under the population health division in the area of health promotion, intervention. With the Health Promotion Fund… Sorry; I’m moving all over the place. Sorry. No further questions there, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. On page 8-17 I have Mr. Hawkins.
Thanks, Madam Chair. The question I have is under Health and Social Services Authority administration. Maybe the Minister could break down what the activities associated with the management and administration are just to help get some clarity. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.
