Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of Health and Social Services in regard to my Member’s statement on the health care provided in northern communities and the importance of this service, which is an essential service to the residents of all these smaller communities. A lot of times we don’t have the privilege of walk-in clinics or even seeing the doctor. Basically you have to wait for the doctor’s visits. In some cases it’s a month or even longer. In some cases we don’t even have a community nurse stationed in a lot of our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important this government has some baseline guidelines in regard to services that are being provided to ensure that there is a minimum level of services in our communities so that people can really feel that their well-being is being taken care of. I’d like to ask the Minister, do we have minimum standards for health care services in all of our communities in the Northwest Territories so we at least know there’s a minimum level that you can get and work your way up from there. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member’s statement and question speaks to the importance of thinking territorially, that whenever we are planning the business plan, programming, we need to look at our work as being territorial. We need to make sure that all of our residents are treated fairly and equitably. This is why in our Foundation for Change we put so much focus on access, because what the Member is talking about is that every resident needs to have access to essential medical and health care and that’s one of the three pillars of the Foundation for Change. Thank you.
Again, in my Member’s statement I talked about the lack of services in a lot of our communities. I think the importance that we talk about here, we talk about respite care, we talk about home care, we talk about supplementary health, but a lot of the times people in a lot of our communities don’t have those fundamental services. Like the communities I represent, a large portion of the population are elderly. We want to keep our elders in our home communities. We want to keep our elders close to their families, but, again, they need that important delivery and service and care, regardless if it’s respite care or home care. So I’d just like to ask the Minister, I know that there’s a lot of wants out there, but what are we doing to ensure that those services are spread fairly throughout the Northwest Territories and everyone has those types of programs and services in the communities that we serve, regardless of the size of the community.
Thank you. The Member is absolutely right in what he’s saying and this is why our work in the department has been in creating a territorial team where doctors, nurses, everybody is working as a team to make their services available to everyone in the Territories, especially the small communities. The Member is right when he says that a lot of our communities, actually over 25 of them have to wait for doctors, eye doctors, specialists, and nurses even come two or three times a week, they’re not there permanently. So we are working and medical directors and all the nursing professions are coming together to work out a territorial plan so that at any given time, anybody in the Territories has access to the essential medical and health services, at the same time, enhancing respite care and home care and community level care so that our residents can stay in their communities as long as possible. Thank you.
Another item that I touched on is the importance of medical travel, of medevacs. In most of our communities that’s the only means of getting in and out of our communities. People have to travel to meet with the different specialists either in Inuvik, here in Yellowknife or Edmonton, or by way of clinical services out of Inuvik hospital. I think it’s important that we have to enhance that program to have a better delivery of medical travel services for the services we do provide. Again, that’s another way that we can improve our medical services in the Territories. So what are we doing to enhance that program so that people really understand medical travel is an essential way of delivering our health care service in the Northwest Territories?
The Member is right when he says that medical travel is an essential part of delivering health care in the North, and this is why we fought for and got, and we have a federal Minister who understands the importance of medical travel in the North and all across the North. That’s part of our additional funding we got under THSSI. What we need to do on the medical travel is that we use the money wisely so that anybody who needs medical travel gets to their medical care. So part of what we’re doing is using technology to make sure that we have the money available to those who really need to get medical travel -- and often they need medical escorts -- where we can use technology and local staff by supporting them where they are we get the diagnosis at home. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to the Minister’s comments, a lot of times in the House, I think sometimes we lose the perspective of the territorial health care delivery system we have in the North. A lot of the time the focus is on the Yellowknife delivery system. I think that we have to ensure that the people outside of Yellowknife are being taken care of and that we are ensuring that their issues are being dealt with. So I’d like to ask the Minister, at some point can you make a statement in this House clearly identifying the delivery service that your department provides to the Northwest Territories as a health care provider. Thank you.
We do have a dichotomy of our residents going down to the Primary Care Centre and they’re concerned that they have to wait for half an hour on the phone for an appointment, whereas in many of our communities we have people who have to wait for days and if they miss a doctor’s appointment, it’s weeks.
So, Mr. Speaker, when Action Canada, the research tank, was up here, when they looked at the fact that we are delivering health care to 40,000 people in 33 communities over a land mass that’s four times bigger than France, he just said that is a challenge. Medical travel, medical technology and efficiency, we need to find those so that we do as much as possible to provide equitable health care service delivery all across the Territories. I will undertake to make a statement on that in the House, as per the Member’s suggestion. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
