Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For my Member’s statement today I am speaking regarding the medical travel in the Beaufort-Delta and Nunakput. What are the policies and procedures for rearranging regular travel to medevac travel for sick patients who had their medical travel cancelled by the air carrier? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think we should be clear about the distinction between medevac travel and medical travel. In this case, I understand the patient was scheduled to fly on medical travel on a regularly scheduled flight and the private airline company cancelled the flight due to lack of passengers on that given day. The airline contacted the patient in question and rescheduled the travel to the next available time. It is unfortunate that that had to happen, but once in a while airlines do cancel their flights or sometimes they are delayed. We made a commitment to contact the airlines to let them know that this does affect medical travel and hopefully it won’t happen again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Will the Minister commit to working with me with the various departments and agencies and the airlines to prevent future patients from having to wait for long periods of time in the communities and when they’re trying to return home after their medical, from seeing the doctor, because of flight cancellations due to the number of passengers? Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, I’d be happy to work with the Member in any way we can to improve our services to our residents in medical travel as well as medevac.
This area has serious flaws, Mr. Speaker, and the Minister and the department should bring this up at contract time for the air services in the Beaufort-Delta and Nunakput. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d be happy to undertake to do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
