Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today will be for the Minister of Health as well. A valid health care card is the difference between getting service and getting no service if it’s invalid, and I have to applaud the Department of Health for recently putting a lot of emphasis on putting advertisements in the paper looking at updating the expired cards or health care cards that are about to expire. However, I must admit that, as of late, some of us are hearing some noise from our constituents that those people whose health care cards expired in January did not receive notifications from the Department of Health or from Inuvik as well.
Can the Minister of Health indicate did he indeed hear that very same message regarding the fact that notices were not being issued for expiry dates in January of 2013? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There should be notifications going out to everyone. I think the hope at one point was that, just like a driver’s licence, when your birthday came up you’d check to see if your health care card was expiring and then you would go down and deal with it. However, it seems like the same attention is not paid to someone’s health card as it is to their driver’s licence, so we’ve mailed out information saying that your health card would be expiring on a specific date, your upcoming birthday and so on. My understanding is that everyone whose health card is expiring early this year has received notification.
I appreciate the Minister’s response to that; however, if everyone was receiving notifications, I guess our phones wouldn’t be ringing off the hook from people upset that they did not get a notification card.
My question again to the Minister is: There has been a glitch in the system with respect to notifications being issued for many health care card users across the Northwest Territories, systematically causing disruptions in services for those people who require those updated cards to receive such services in the Northwest Territories. Has the Minister or the department made provisions for basically causing a little bit of a backlog here and has the department made provisions for this backlog?
If there is some bit of a backlog because people were not notified through the regular notification system, then the department will do what it can to get that caught up as soon as possible. If we have specific individuals that have not received notification advice either through their MLA or one of the authorities or even Stanton to let people know in the system that they haven’t received their health card, then we will get on that and try to get the health cards to individuals as soon as possible.
Again, I do stress the integrity of the health care system is paramount and with these delays. I can assure you there is going to be lots of frustration out there in the Northwest Territories for receiving such services. Further, it has been brought to my attention that we have got some other issues with respect to information. With everything that we’ve heard about keeping of information, people’s information, and the privacy, there appears to be some files, from what we have been told, from patients that have been lost from the Inuvik office. The fact that these files are in the process of trying to be retrieved, can the Minister assure this House and the people of the Northwest Territories that, indeed, no patient files have been lost and the integrity of our system is intact?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. That is a new line of questioning, but I’ll give it to the Minister if he wants to take it. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated, I thought that everybody had received notice. There was an attempt to try to make people personally responsible for their health care cards. If the individuals have sent in information on their health care card and have not received anything, I’ve advised the office in Inuvik and they said the information was lost. Naturally, we’re going to do all we can to recover the information. I heard that there are people who may have information lost, but I haven’t received any specifics. If I can get specifics from the Member, I will follow up on it and try to find that information.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that. It wasn’t quite a new question because it was regarding the health care card information being lost. I tried to tie them together, but I do respect the Speaker’s point on that.
What I’m asking here from the Minister, quite clearly, is there are obviously some issues here involving people’s health care card renewals and now information. Can the Minister actually assure the House and assure the standing committee here in the future that the integrities are in place, and can we get something back in writing from the Minister of that integrity?
The department will do everything possible to make sure that people are notified. We will confirm that.
We recognize we’re talking about a volume of about 3,000 people each month whose health care cards will expire. If everyone has not received notification, we will follow up with those individuals and also with anybody who has indicated that there’s a possibility that their information has gotten lost, either going to Inuvik or coming back from Inuvik. We will track that and get to the bottom of any of these issues.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
