Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just in reference to my Member’s statement earlier, all the good work that the government has been doing in terms of dealing with our Aboriginal governments. I’d like to follow up with raising a concern that’s been brought forth to our Minister of Health in regard to the lack of doctor services, long services from doctors in the community of Inuvik. The Minister stated at our Beaufort-Delta leadership meetings that it is the number one priority to get doctors in the region, and that was on January 10th, I believe, he made that comment. I’d just like to ask the Minister what has his department done since making those strong comments in addressing this issue for the shortfall of services in the Beaufort-Delta Health Authority. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. A question for the Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since our Beaufort-Delta meeting I’ve had many meetings, many strategic meetings with the Department of Health and Social Services. I also met with the Joint Leadership Council, which are the public administrators and the chairpersons of each of the health and social services authorities, and we’ve particularly talked about this issue several times and also several times at that meeting. Thank you.
Previous to some of the questions that I’ve asked in the past, we’ve done a lot of talking. We know what the issues are; we need to put action to these issues that have been there for a long time. Since 1994, Yellowknife recruiting staff have not done a successful job in putting a long service doctor in Inuvik. That needs to be taken care of and it needs to be taken care of with this government. One of the main things that possibly can be not having these doctors in Inuvik are the incentives for doctors to live out of Yellowknife but do locum services in Inuvik. Can I ask the Minister how can he change that policy where there are incentives for doctors to work up in Inuvik and non-incentives for doctors to live out of Yellowknife and only do locum in Inuvik?
Our first priority is to have doctors in the regions for easy access for the patients. We need doctors to be in the regions, and Inuvik is one of the regions and has nine positions. Of the nine positions, only 0.8 positions are filled in Inuvik. There have been attempts, there have been websites put out in an attempt to recruit, but as I said, in the Beaufort-Delta we are prepared to work with the community of Inuvik, whether it be the municipality or Beaufort-Delta leadership in order to attract doctors to Inuvik as a first priority. Thank you.
I’d like to thank the Minister of Health for letting us all know that we’re failing in getting staff up into the Beaufort-Delta region. The health authority, 0.8 of nine is not acceptable and I think that needs to change. Even if we had one or two positions filled, that would lead to a lot of success in our region.
Right now the Beaufort-Delta Health Authority is in a big deficit and it’s been accumulating over the years and I believe that the main reason behind that are these incentives that we’re giving locums to come into our region to only work for a short period of time. I’d like to ask for a strong commitment and action plan from the Minister today that this will be addressed and that we can have an action plan before our next session in May. Thank you.
Thank you. I agree. The department has spent a lot of money on locums and at this point that has been the solution, that the locums are coming from the South to address the doctor needs, the physician needs in the Beaufort-Delta. As the Member indicated, only one doctor that works about six and a half hours a day is employed and lives in Inuvik and our attempt is to bring doctors to Inuvik. It’s very difficult to bring one or two doctors into a community. It is a lot easier to bring a fifth, sixth and seventh doctor. So we’re trying to develop a strategy that will bring many doctors in that will attract other doctors, as doctors like to work with doctors. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Bringing in more locums just adds to the problem of a lack of quality care, a lack of continued services to our patients that need that trust in their doctors, and that’s not being met when we start bringing more people down from the communities. The incentives, bringing more locums from down south just adds to the lack of services that we’ll get in Inuvik. It’s just more incentives for locums to come from down south, get paid more money than if they were living in Inuvik. So that also needs to change. I ask the Minister if he’d be willing to commit to revising or looking at that policy on incentives for locums and getting a long-term doctor in Inuvik. Thank you.
The Department of Health and Social Services is currently working with the Department of Human Resources on a new Physician Recruitment Strategy. The strategy is to bring the doctors into the community. That is the number one priority. We are still using locums from the South. A plan B could be to bring the doctors from Yellowknife and then the doctors from here would work in the Beaufort-Delta and have more continuity, but we’re still trying to work on the strategy to bring doctors into Inuvik and the other regional centres that don’t have doctors.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
