Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services with regard to the Medical Travel Policy. I guess my first question would be: Does the department have a point of contract or an NWT coordinator or regional coordinator for anybody that’s travelling to either Edmonton or Yellowknife for medical treatment or appointments to contact, should they be travelling on the weekend, say a Saturday or Sunday, and needs some information? It might even be late at night and somebody could give them assistance so they can get back to their home town, back into their community such as Inuvik. Does the department currently have an on-call service for after hours or on the weekend, should people find themselves in that situation?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Anyone travelling with medical travel, according to the policy, should have an after-hours number so that if an individual is returning from medical travel on Sunday, Saturday or a late night flight, then that individual is supposed to be equipped with an after-hours number if they cannot afford to get back home to their community. So if an individual is landing in Inuvik and they are from another community in the area, they would overnight in Inuvik in a boarding home. If they are from Inuvik, they are supposed to just jump in a cab, go home and be reimbursed. If they don’t have money, there is a number that is provided to them.
When individuals are consulted on this after-hours number or when they are going through their itinerary, is there somebody else in the room with these clients or individuals? In some cases, I’ve had elders approach me where they have agreed on medical travel and agreed to go to Edmonton without an escort when, in fact, they did need an escort. When I have approached the Minister in the past, he’s always said this elder – the Minister’s office, I shouldn’t say the Minister himself – was consulted. However, in some cases, the elder or the individual might just agree, not knowing what they’re agreeing to. So is there someone else that is consulted, a third party that the client can approach that attends these meetings with the client?
There should be. If the health professional is not able to communicate with the individual, then there should be somebody else there that can provide assistance to the individual and the health profession to ensure communication. I’m afraid what the Member is bringing up is correct. Sometimes elders will just get the information and then go down south. What we can do is, in cases where individuals are travelling to and from, we can alert Larga. For example, if they are in Inuvik, Vital Abel is available if they are here, to make sure that the people understand when they are going back home or when they’re travelling in, they understand that these are the numbers they are to call if they were to get into any distress or if they are feeling nobody is there available to pick them up at the airport and so on, so we can ensure that the system is picking that up. Thank you.
Thank you. Another issue that we’re having with the Medical Travel Policy here is the amount of time it takes for an individual to get approval for their travel, for their appointments and the amount of time when they do have an appointment, they’re usually given sometimes last minute notice – a day, not even two days, sometimes even the same day – that they’ve got an approval to go on travel. This also results in some of the no-shows that we have, this government has taken in as debt because of people not showing up to their appointments.
Has there been any update or any upgrades to the approval system of medical travel in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you. The Department of Health and Social Services is able to gather all of the information necessary to modernize the Medical Travel Policy and the Medical Travel Program. At this time, some of those issues are the exact things we’re trying to work out of the system. We recognize that medical travel is a very important part of people travelling to appointments because we can’t always bring the doctors to the people. So we are working with that, we’re looking at some electronic aids and so on that would be able to help sometimes and maybe divert medical travel. But at the end of the day, there are 1,000 medical travel trips a month. We’re trying to make each of those events as uneventful and smooth of a trip down to see the doctor and back. So that is something that we are currently looking at. Hopefully we’ll get the bugs out. It’s a difficult task, but we’re trying to get the bugs out of the medical system so it works effectively for everyone. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Medical Travel Policy itself hasn’t been revised in about 15 years and the Minister has made some suggestions to that. When would this government look at a possible revised Medical Travel Policy that might include such things as an after-hours coordinator, a weekend coordinator, language translator and speeding up the process such as putting in timelines? Is there a timeline that we can see a revised Medical Travel Policy within this government? Thank you.
Thank you. Unfortunately, I do not have the exact date of when we are going to make changes to the Medical Travel Policy. We have someone currently working on it. I don’t know of the timelines, but I am prepared and willing to provide that information to the Members as soon as I can. Before the end of session I can provide the timelines. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
