Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, I had questions for the Minister of Health. The community of Hay River had a management board in place before; now it has been replaced with a public administrator. Will the Minister look at putting a public advisory board into the community of Hay River?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no plan to put a board back in place in Hay River immediately. We are looking at the legislation to see what type of management structures we would be allowed to have in the various authorities right across the territory, because right now the past board, as it stands, was a board for Hay River only.
When we build a new health centre and we were trying to bring some of the surrounding communities, as Mr. Bouchard indicated, they will provide service from that centre to some of the surrounding communities. For example, right now people drive from Fort Resolution to Hay River, get on a plane and come here for health services. It may be possible to provide the health service right in Hay River. It would save a lot of money on medical travel and so on. We want to see that restructuring of our health services based on the new modern health centre in Hay River will do before we decide to refill the board positions because they may be from other communities. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I understand the Minister’s issues with that. In the interim, the public has no effective way of communicating their concerns in the community with health issues. There is one public administrator, one person. If you don’t know that person… I am looking to see if the Minister would allow for an advisory board. I am not looking for the management of the operations; I am looking for an advisory board to give the public administrator some feedback from the community so that we can branch out the contacts in the community so that the community feels like they’re engaged with their health care system.
Mr. Speaker, I will look at the legislation and the whole governance around the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. As you and Members of the House are aware, each authority has their own governance at this time. I will look at that legislation, look at the governance surrounding that and see if it’s possible to appoint an advisory board through that model. If it is possible, I will certainly consider that. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful to the Minister for looking into that. My other area of concern I had in my Member’s statement was the flexibility of funding. As I indicated, we have funding for permanent doctors in Hay River. We currently don’t have any, but we have been using nurse practitioners, but the funds to fund those nurse practitioners are column funded so we can’t use the doctors’ funds to do that.
Has the Minister come up with a solution and been able to allow the community, the authority for Hay River to do some flexibility in these funds?
Mr. Speaker, we have not come up with a solution to provide flexible funding for Hay River. At this time, interestingly enough, we are waiting for a business case from the Hay River Health Authority senior management and two other health authorities that will give us the business case returned back to the Financial Management Board who restricts the funding for physicians. Once we are able to develop a business case for these authorities, then we will present that to the Financial Management Board to determine whether or not we will be allowed to build flexibility into physician funding to allow us to hire others like nurse practitioners in a system with the physician funding. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been asking the Minister this question for quite a long time about this flexibility, and he keeps going back to the FMBS and the solution. I am wondering when the Minister will commit to completing this process.
The community of Hay River wants to have coroners, nurse practitioners, wants to be able to use their funds so that the community can have a better health care system. When will the Minister commit to getting this flexibility in funds?
Mr. Speaker, I will ask the department to provide me a business case on all three health authorities by the end of April. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
