Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to rise and continue my discussions on prescription drug abuse here in the NWT. We do have serious addictions issues in the NWT and I know we are working toward solutions of dealing with them, and clearly I want to state for the record that we don’t want to undermine the fact that alcohol is probably one of, by far, the most abused substance in the NWT, but we do have a number of untracked addictions issues out there. With the recent NWT chief coroner’s report they echo those very same sentiments.
Prescription drug abuse of narcotics, benzodiazepines and certain over-the-counter medications are no longer the quiet addiction, and this addiction is real and now seeing the light of day.
My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. As the issue of prescription drug abuse continues to surface, and again, when the NWT chief coroner reminds us of these 17 overdose cases from 2009 to 2012, what is the Minister or Department of Health and Social Services doing to track this addiction? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. We don’t actually have a mechanism to track prescription drug abuse at this point in time, but things are underway to try and address this particular concern, and it is a serious concern and we do need to address it.
Under the Pharmacy Act there is an ability to set up a prescription monitoring program, but due to privacy issues that we’re all aware of, we currently cannot require health care providers to enter information into the program. Because we cannot require health care providers to enter the information, we have not yet set up a program to monitor prescriptions.
We are working on the Health Information Act, and the Health Information Act would require health care providers to enter in the information to a prescription monitoring program, should one be established under the Pharmacy Act. Once we have the Health Information Act, we would be able to set up a functioning prescription monitoring program to help tackle prescription drug abuse issues in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
It sounds like we’re hearing a broken record here today from the Minister. I heard the very same results here going back almost two years ago in this House on February 14, 2012, from the previous Minister of Health, that there was to be work undertaken with the Bureau of Statistics to include prescription drug abuse with a general addictions survey.
Can the Minister of Health today indicate whether or not this actually happened? Thank you.
There are things happening with respect to the survey. I’ll certainly get that information back to the Member.
Within individual health and social services authorities, or at the authority level, steps have been taken and put in place to limit access to prescription medications in situations where there is a concern about potential abuse of medications. Also, the federal government is currently working in partnership with all of the territories and provinces across the country and looking at ways to address prescription drug abuse. As a department, we will continue to work with the federal and provincial governments on preventing and providing appropriate treatment services, including surveillance data on prescription drug abuse. So there are a number of things we are working on already under this particular issue.
It’s hard for me to understand from the Minister, they’re doing work in this area, but they’re not tracking anything, and without statistics, how do you track this issue? The NWT coroner’s service tables an annual report that makes countless recommendations to assist this government in making strategic decisions with related addictions and death management, but sadly, a large majority of these recommendations fall on deaf ears.
Can the Minister of Health reaffirm his department’s commitment to deal with the recent seven recommendations from the office of the chief coroner on addressing prescription drug abuse in the NWT?
I, like everybody else, have just received the report and will carefully consider the seven recommendations outlined by the coroner; however, I am not prepared to speak to those details yet because we haven’t concluded that review.
To the Member’s first part of the question, we would love to track medications and whatnot in order to avoid these types of issues, but as I said, there really is no system to do that or to require professionals to put that information into a prescription monitoring system until we complete the Health Information Act. Once we have the Health Information Act done, we will be able to make amendments and put in a prescription monitoring program which all people will be required to provide updates into. Once we have that, we will be able to provide detail and have the information in the future, but until we get the Health Information Act, we don’t have the ability to do that. We are getting that done.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister is in error; you can track that information. This government has long-standing adjudication agreements with third-party adjudicators. Aside from the fact from cash-paying customers, they can track this information quite readily if they choose to do so.
Can the Minister indicate specifically what his office will do to improve small community clinical support network and the management of opiate prescribing and opiate addiction?
We can require individuals to put information into a prescription monitoring program, or we can, rather, ask them to do, but we cannot force them to do it at this particular point in time. Once we have the Health Information Act, it will be a requirement and they will need to put it in there. The Member is actually, in fact, wrong.
With respect to what we are doing already, the individual health authorities, as I have already said, have put in place processes to limit access to prescription medications in situations where they have concern about a potential abuser. I will go a little further. The NWT Medical Directors’ Forum is working on guidelines for controlled substances. These will be territory-wide and include the educational component. Guidelines and standards for the medical management of opiate dependence is part of the work the Medical Directors’ Forum on guidelines for controlled substances. One of our physicians has taken training for methadone and Suboxone prescriptions and the management of chronic pain. We will be using the expertise of these physicians and outside experts to further develop controlled substance education throughout the Northwest Territories.
In fact, we are doing a number of things. We take this very seriously. Obviously, we can do more. The Health Information Act will be an important tool for us making progress in this area.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
