Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke of the recently tabled statistical data of no-show rates for our various specialists, practitioners, travel clinics and our operating rooms.
Alarming information shows that health care no-show rates have not really resolved themselves in the Northwest Territories. This begs to ask some questions today of the Minister responsible, which is the Minister of Health and Social Services.
Before we begin to get into the details of these no-show rates and what can be done about them, I think committee found that the recently tabled Health annual report to be rather limited in information on this topic.
Can the Minister indicate why the department could not report the no-show rates for practitioners outside of Yellowknife and the Sahtu? What were the barriers of this reporting?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will certainly get some more detailed information for the Member on this, but one of the challenges we face getting data from other authorities is the fact that every authority in the Northwest Territories is operated on different IT/IS/IM systems, they have different accounting systems, but we will continue to work with the authorities to get that information and I will provide some more detail to the Member once I get it from the department. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister’s response to that. Having a more complete picture of our no-show rates begins with expanding the scope of the performance measures.
Can the Minister indicate why the no-show rates for travel clinics and operating rooms were not included in the department’s Health and Social Services Annual Report, and is he able to maybe offer some statistics on that in the House today? Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t have any of those statistics in front of me today, but I’ll certainly get that information from the department and share with the Member.
As far as the travel clinics and whatnot, we have the same problem that we do here in Yellowknife. This is a big issue for us. We know there are significant costs on the system. I do know that the Member had a life previous to government where he was in health care outside of the public service, so I’d really be interested in his ideas and concepts for helping us improve the no-show rates. A number of things need to happen, we get that, and I’m certainly looking forward to the Member’s input as we move forward.
I appreciate that and I will definitely work with the Minister if he’s asking for it.
As to the question of what the department is actually doing to mitigate these no-show rates, can the Minister clearly articulate what his department’s policy on addressing this issue is? Thank you.
Thank you. Recognizing that we have eight health and social services authorities in the Northwest Territories, each with their own unique challenges and their own unique realties, some being all community-based, some being more regional centre-based, some being hospital-based, like Stanton, each one of them has developed their own policy or their own procedures around trying to encourage people to attend their appointment. One thing we do, and all the authorities do, is I know that they do encourage people to let the authorities know, or the practitioners know, when they’re not going to be able to make it. That way appointments can be rebooked, but when people just don’t show up, that is a big problem and that’s something that, I agree with the Member, more work needs to be done. Each of the authorities has their own plan to deal with that because each authority is unique with their own unique challenges. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For my final question, everything we do or don’t do has a cost to the taxpayer.
Can the Minister quantify and indicate to the House what is the potential financial impact on the entire health care system with these no-shows? Thank you.
Thank you. It would be very difficult to give an exact dollar figure for that because the reason an individual might not attend an appointment or, rather, the appointment the individual misses may have a significantly different cost than an appointment that another individual misses. So, just having a number of missed appointments doesn’t really help us quantify it. We would have to dig in for each appointment, figure out what the procedures that were supposed to be done would have been and work from there. This would take a significant amount of work. We do believe it’s significant.
I do agree with the Member that this is something that we need to continue to work on, and once again, I’m very interested in the Member’s opinions and thoughts on this with respect to his previous experience as a health provider outside of the public service. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
