Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is my pleasure to recognize a Frame Lake constituent, Barb Wyness, who is here today. She is the public relations and research officer with UNW. She attends most of our beginning sessions to try and get the scoop on where we are going. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mrs. Groenewegen.
I would like to recognize a delegation of senior management in our public service. It looks like a group of deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers who have joined us here today. Having been in this Legislature for 18 years, there are some days we have a hard time just understanding the briefings until we are very happy to see the deputies walk in the room. Thank you.
I would like to welcome my daughter here today, Kirstin. It is always good to have one of my children taking care of me. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a follow-up on my Member’s statement about the tragedy and non-response about our medevac plane into Trout Lake. I would like to ask a question to the Minister of Health and Social Services.
I would assume that there are targets for response times for medevac flights to each community. What is or would be the emergency response time target for the community of Trout Lake? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The response time would depend upon what type of craft would be needed. In this case, they determined, after contacting the medical people in the Deh Cho, that a Twin Otter was needed. So a Twin Otter was configured as quickly as that can happen to get to the site would be the response time.
I agree with the Minister that when they get there would be the response time, but what I am really after here is we should have set targets, that if there is an emergency in the community of Trout Lake or any of our communities in the Northwest Territories, once that call is made, there should be a specific plan and time frame to get that medevac plane there.
It seems to me that there really is no targeted response times or standards for medevac or getting to our communities or responding to medical emergencies. Will the Minister make sure that there are emergency response time targets and standards for each community that ensures that failure to meet these times are documented? This seems critical to improving our systems in the future. Mahsi.
Again, depending on what type of craft is needed, what type of vehicle would be needed for the medevac would depend upon the response time. What I can advise the Member is we can ensure that when the call is received, that the medevac people are out as quickly as possible, as soon as they can get into the air. That is supposed to be the standard. As soon as the people are mobilized and the plane can be in the air is the time we’re trying to achieve. Thank you.
It hardly seems professional to have a medevac system such as this where it’s almost like a roll of the dice. If you put in your call and then say when they get there, that that’s the response time, that’s not enough for our people that want a safe and reliable medevac system and the comfort to believe in our health care system.
So, once again, maybe I can ask specifically: Is there a standard or what standard are we using to ensure that all residents of the Northwest Territories are taken care of when we’re using our medevac system? Thank you.
All of the standards for the medevacs are laid out in the contracts between Stanton and the people that provide medevac services. Again, it would be difficult to put an actual time period in any specific community because it would depend largely on what type of craft would be needed.
In this specific case, the plane that would be ready under normal circumstances to pick up a medevac was not suitable to go into Trout Lake. They had to reconfigure a different plane. That took some time.
I agree with the Member that there was too much time at the outset contacting the medical people, and we are working between ourselves, Stanton Health Authority, and Deh Cho Health and Social Services to determine what had occurred there and why there was nobody available to take the call immediately. We are debriefing to find out what exactly happened, and we will be addressing those issues. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The medevac system has to know what type of airport was at Trout Lake. I’m not too sure what’s going on there.
My final, short supplementary, Mr. Speaker, is to ask the Minister to investigate the medical travel system’s response to the recent emergency in Trout Lake and publicly report its findings not only to this House but also to the community of Trout Lake, who is still extremely upset about this whole ordeal. Thank you very much.
I can commit to doing that. I will commit to doing that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about the many shortcomings of the recent changes in our GNWT medevac program in which our family and friends are now being dropped off and orphaned at the new Air Operations Centre at the Edmonton International Airport. Admittedly, like many of you, I was led to believe that in preparation of this new service all was good, that patient care was paramount and that full communication would be shared with Regular Members of this House and residents of the NWT during its process.
Well, with little advanced notice and only two weeks into this new program we are now seeing the exposed results of this new secretive investment, which is now begging some serious questions that need to be asked of our Minister of Health and Social Services.
During a recent press release, the Minister of Health and Social Services stated, “I believe we have achieved our goal and in fact have improved the quality of patient care.”
Can the Minister please explain to this House, how is adding over 35 minutes of patient transfer time, in any way, shape or form, an improvement of quality patient care? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The fact that the Edmonton Centre Airport closed down was not a decision that laid with this government. The fact that there is more time to fly to the International Airport is because it happens to be further away than the Municipal Airport. However, what I was referring to was the care once the person arrived. We are able to move the person that is being medevaced to Edmonton into an ambulance service that would take them through the city and we are able to hand them over at the airport instead of outside, or having a contractor that we were contracting from here pick them up outside of the Municipal Airport and bringing them to the hospital. We’re using that service that all of Alberta is using, the ambulatory service that all of Alberta is using, we’re tying into that and we figure it’s a good service and we figure that’s an improvement. Thank you.
On the subject of handing over our patients to a contractor, we’ve all heard that this new Air Operations Centre is in the same hangar space of the so-called STARS helicopter. So can the Minister indicate to this House how many times has this STARS helicopter been used in the last two weeks to transport our NWT critical care patients to Edmonton hospital emergency wards?
I don’t have that information, but the Member did mention that it was not used. So I’m assuming that there was no requirement for a STARS helicopter to be used to transport patients from the Edmonton International to the hospital. So likely it hasn’t been used at this point. Thank you.
In my statement earlier today, I spoke about the new barriers of effective patient transfer that we’re now exposed to. Many of these barriers dealt with the lack of continuity of patient care, increased communication errors potential with multiple patient or practitioner interventions and the patient’s undue stress with these new imposed drop-off services. Can the Minister indicate how his department is dealing with all of these shortfalls? Thank you.
If we thought there were shortfalls, we wouldn’t be putting in such a system. We feel that this is an improvement. We’re handing a patient over the same way that all of Alberta that medevac people into Edmonton hand their patients over. We think we’re handing them over to the Alberta Health Services at that point and we think that the patient is getting good care, excellent care from the time that they arrive. They’re able to go into the terminal, they’re able to turn the plane around quicker, the medevac plane can have a patient waiting there, delivered there by Alberta Health Services and the transfer can be done in the hangar at the International Airport and the plane bringing back the patient can be turned around a lot quicker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure you that the rest of Alberta is having the same concerns as many NWT residents have in terms of the quality of the care in this transfer program. It’s not just the NWT.
Finally, we have the issue of contract and cost, with this new Alberta Health Service’s offering. Can the Minister indicate what the so-called new, improved drop-off services is costing NWT taxpayers and how long is this contract?
There is no contract. They are doing this under an intergovernmental agreement with Alberta and it’s costing $600,000 a year.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to keep the Minister of Health and Social Services jumping up and down from sitting to standing and ask him some questions.
I spoke about the need for a Health Information Act in my statement, and I’d like to ask the Minister, considering that we are increasingly using electronic medical records within the NWT, and considering we have an increasing number of complaints around the privacy of patients’ info regarding medical records, whether or not… I feel that this government does not recognize the importance of adopting legislation to protect residents’ privacy relative to health records. I’d like to ask the Minister what priority does a Health Information Act have in the department’s legislative agenda.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Health Information Act is top priority for the Department of Health and Social Services, and we would be hoping that the bill will be ready for introduction in the 2013 fall session.
Thanks to the Minister for that update. I guess I would like to ask the Minister, he says he hopes that it’s going to be ready by the fall. Normally committee receives some indication of what the bill is going to contain in advance, so can the Minister advise when committee is going to get some indication of the content of this new act?
The act will go through the regular process. We are targeting the fall 2013 session. I did say hopefully that will happen. Provided nothing goes sideways, we’re expecting that the bill will be provided to committee prior to that, at the appropriate time prior to the time that it’s introduced in the House in 2013, the fall.
Thanks to the Minister. I guess I’m having trouble. The Minister of Health and Social Services is starting to sound like Minister Miltenberger and talking about the fullness of time.
Committee will have to wait with bated breath for this information, which may or may not come in the fall, and I do hope that it does.
A number of jurisdictions within Canada do or are currently now… They’ve either gone through a review or they are currently going through a review of health, of health information acts.
I’d like to know from the Minister whether the work that we are doing on our Health Information Act is looking at what’s going on in other jurisdictions and trying not to reinvent the wheel.
I will assume that the Territorial Electronic Medical Record Project Team will be looking at best practices across the Territories and then put the information together for the act, and also that they had also reviewed all of the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations, and through the review they have addressed the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner pertaining to this area.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, that’s a great segue into my next question. I was going to ask about the recommendations in the Information and Privacy Commissioner's report, and the Minister has advised that these have been considered. But the Commissioner also advised committee when we met with her that the health authority has not accepted all of her recommendations and has not made the changes that she recommended. Can I ask the Minister why not? Thank you.
Yellowknife Health and Social Services has responded to the information, the Commissioner, of privacy concerns. If certain recommendations in the report that the health authority did not agree with, that may have been the reason that they have not responded to every concern, but every concern that was put out there where the health authority felt that required a response or a change, that has been made. Thank you.
Thank you. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement today, I had some questions for the Minister of Justice. I would like to ask the Minister, how is the Department of Justice measuring the results of the Domestic Violence Treatment Option court program that currently exists in Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The DVTO court has been in place since March 24, 2011. Since that time we have had 22 participants go through the program – 17 male, 6 female – who have successfully completed the program. When we first put the program in, we indicated that we were going to do a review and we are actually in the process of signing a contract right now to have a review done. That review is anticipated to be completed by July 31st of this year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister what kind of results has the DVTO court achieved so far. Until such time as this review is done, perhaps he doesn’t have concrete answers, but perhaps he could tell us what the department’s general feeling is on the success of this program. Thank you.
Before we can say anything concrete, we do have to wait for the report to come in, but anecdotally, the response that we are getting back is quite positive, so much so that the courts have actually indicated that they’d like to expand this program and move outside of Yellowknife to Inuvik and Hay River, which is something we are interested in doing. We want to wait until we see the July 31st report so that we have concrete information. We are looking and considering moving this court outside of Yellowknife. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. It is very good news to hear this. There are a lot of things we want in Hay River. This is one of them, just one on a long list.
What resources are needed to expand the DVTO program to the regional centres? What kinds of resources, other than money, are required to be in place in the community in order for this program to work? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, part of the program is that we require some expertise on the partner program that goes along with the DVTO courts. Now, in Hay River I believe that those resources and that expertise exists. So it is going to be money. Basically we need money to make this happen outside of the Yellowknife centre. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
