Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve often raised the issue of Stanton Territorial Hospital’s deficit, and over the years I’ve often said that it’s my belief that it’s underfunded and it needs a true and serious detailed funding assessment. Recently, I went to the public administrator’s open house to talk about this particular issue about how the hospital is running, and of course, I was very impressed with the work that they’re doing there. What stood out clearly are two particular issues. The first one is the physician costs and medical travel costs are put down on the Stanton Territorial Hospital. Certainly, the second issue out of it is it’s completely out of their control.
The point I’m getting to is that’s what’s causing the deficit at Stanton Territorial Hospital, things they have to manage and control but are out of their responsibility.
My question to the Minister of Health and Social Services simply is: Is his department doing an assessment and consideration about moving those particular costs outside of the Stanton Territorial Hospital and making them a departmental cost, which will allow the hospital to operate financially sound?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We are currently reviewing the Medical Travel Policy, the entire program. We do feel that there are some issues with the program and we are reviewing it. We have our staff in place now that will be doing a review of the program.
As far as physician costs, Stanton Hospital is a territorial hospital, so it does provide service to all of the other communities and they’re budgeted for that reason. As far as that creating a deficit, that does create a bit of a deficit, but it’s getting a lot better in the last couple of years. The deficit has gone down considerably.
I appreciate the Minister recognizing those two particular issues, the ones I’ve raised, but I think he’s missed the concern that they’re well outside the ability to manage it at Stanton.
The Department of Health sets the mandate and value of what they will provide the authority for physician costs, as well as medical travel costs, but their burdened to run the actuals. In other words, the department provides a budget and the Stanton authority has to do the actual, which always puts them in deficit. That’s why I once again ask, would the Minister be able to take a look at the situation and ask themselves, as a department, would it not better fit under a departmental expense rather than causing a continual deficit at Stanton Hospital, which makes them look bad when it really isn’t their fault.
I agree that medical travel is more of travel where the costs at one time used to be costed out or spent or expended authority by authority, but Stanton is running the medical travel. The Stanton Territorial Hospital is running the medical travel and they’re saying that it does create part of their deficit. It’s a large chunk of their expenditures – the biggest chunk, actually, when we divide it into certain sections – but it is being reviewed. That’s the reason we have brought staff in to review it, to make sure that these costs that should be charged to other authorities are charged to other authorities and not to Stanton, and that the cost is not driven by other authorities and then Stanton is forced to pay for it. That’s part of the view.
I appreciate the Minister recognizes the problem, which is now followed by my next question, which is: In the interim, is the Minister willing to cover the actual costs of both the physician and the medical travel costs? Because at present, what’s being budgeted is nowhere near sufficient enough to cover the actuals. That’s what keeps making this authority look bad when they’re doing a fantastic job. That’s the issue. Would the Minister see what he can do?
Right-sizing the budget is probably going to be part of the review.
