Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in the House before, Hay River is having difficulties getting permanent doctors. Speaking with the health board there, they’ve indicated there is also a barrier to funding. The fact is that there is a budget for doctors, but it doesn’t allow them to hire additional nurse practitioners and additional professionals in the community because the dollars are allocated for doctors. My question today is for the Minister of Health. Why is this barrier in place? I guess that is the first question. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time there is a restriction on allocating doctor funding. It’s a restriction that’s placed by the Financial Management Board to ensure that we always have enough physician funding in the budget to hire doctors. We have a certain amount of doctors that we need to operate in the North, and that funding at this time is restricted into that budget. Thank you.
In light of Hay River’s situation currently, is there a way that the Minister can implement a temporary moratorium of sorts to allow Hay River the flexibility to hire those additional professionals while we don’t have permanent doctors so that we can have consistent professionals in the community of Hay River?
The department will actually be working on a business case for reallocation in that funding, and also the expansion of other health professionals, and particularly the nurse practitioner duties, in order to try to accommodate the lack of doctors in the various communities. Thank you.
My next question is: What is the timeline that the Minister would expect that we’d be able to implement this type of funding to allow nurse practitioners and, hopefully, a Midwifery Program into the Hay River Health Centre. What kind of timeline?
One of the political directions that I have given to the department is to look at a strategy to bring doctors into it. As part of that strategy, as I indicated, would be the expansion of the nurse practitioner duties and other health professionals. We are actually starting the process now to try to develop something, whether it is going to be a model that brings doctors into the communities or doctors into the North or switching or expanding some duties of other health professionals in order to accommodate this. We are actually starting on the process now. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Yes, we look forward to that sooner than later, Mr. Speaker. I have no further questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
