Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member's statement, I spoke about the challenges that we are facing in regards to the health system. I would like to address my questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services.
As some of the Members are aware, Deh Cho Health and Social Services has a public administrator. Can the Minister please explain to the House what the public administrator's role is versus the authority’s role versus the department's?
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the department's mandate and duties are outlined clearly in the Health and Social Services Establishment Policy very broadly. The department plays a coordinating and policy role, which includes setting standards and policies, providing subject-matter expertise, flowing funding, setting reporting requirements, and monitoring for compliance. The department has some direct program areas that their responsible for as well, the vital stats, as well as health insurance. Authorities are the delivery agents of the Health and Social Services System and their role is primarily operational. The Hospital Insurance and Health and Social Services Administration Act provides the framework for the authority operation and their accountability. The act also provides for the establishment of boards of management and outlines their duties as well. The Minister appoints the board of management. Generally, boards are responsible for overseeing all aspects of operations, ensuring the authority works within legislation standards, policy and any other requirements that may be set by the Minister. Another key role is to engage with communities and hear their issues and concerns at a regional and community level. The act provides the Minister with the authority to remove a board of management for a number of different reasons and appoint a public administrator. When a public administrator is appointed, that public administrator actually has the authority of the board.
I thank the Minister for his answer. As I said in my Member's statement here today, a number of issues have been brought to me regarding the service we have in the Nahendeh riding. Can the Minister please explain the process that the residents of the NWT have available to them to address their concerns with the medical services?
Quality assurance is a critical component of the healthcare system to ensure that we have feedback to actually ensure that the system is meeting its needs. Every health and social services authority has a patient representative who can work to address these concerns quickly and efficiently at the regional level. Concerns can also be raised with the CEO, board chair, or public administrator in the case of the Deh Cho. The department also has as system navigator who can be contacted by phone or email and helps to resolve complaints and concerns. A formal written complaint can also be sent to the complaint officer appointed under each of the professions licensing legislation when the complaint is with a particular practitioner.
A constituent may also choose to seek the support and intervention of the Member of the Legislative Assembly and/or come directly to the Minister when dealing with their concerns. The department has prepared specific binders which outline all of this information for each of the Members in the House specific to their individual ridings and regions. I'm hoping to have a sit-down with each of the Members to go through that binder, but bottom line is: We want to refer our clients to the quality assurance staff within the authority so that they can actually do internal reviews of the processes to make sure that we're learning from mistakes and that we are continuing the make a system that works and meets the needs of our residents.
I again thank the Minister for his answer. Can the Minister please explain how the hours of operations and process to get appointments were changed without consulting the residents in leadership in Fort Simpson?
The CEOs are always trying to balance off staff resources with community needs to deliver the best services possible to all the residents of the Northwest Territories at a community level. The walk-in process in Fort Simpson was not found to be effective. With low volumes of patients coming into the clinic in the morning and high volumes of patients showing up in late afternoon, this actually led to long wait times for patients, and then limited the amount of time with each patient, and mostly they were only able to address specific issues when an individual came in given the limited time.
The new approach that was put in by the CEO is an effort to ensure that staff have adequate time to review charts and spend time with patients and actually provide them quality care. The change was made in response to a number of complaints from residents about the wait times and the walk-in appointments. The CEO and the public administrator are very happy to add this item to the agenda for the next public meeting they'll have in Fort Simpson to get more and additional information from the residents of Fort Simpson.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I thank the Minister for his response. With all the challenges and the issues that I've been addressing with the Health and Social Services Minister in the system, including staffing, since being elected, I'd like to ask the Minister to commit to doing an external review of the health and social services system so we can build on what is working and what needs to be improved within the system.
Quality assurance and constant monitoring of our systems and the programs that are being delivered is critical, and to that end, I once again encourage the Member, and all Members, to encourage your staff to engage with the quality assurance staff in each of the authorities when they have a constituent who has an issue. This will allow them to do a review of the incident and try to determine what happened and what can be improved. Having said that, the department does occasionally conduct quality reviews and other audits of the regional authorities. I'm certainly happy to sit down and share the results of the most recent review that was done about two years ago with the Member to go through in detail what we learned.
The department also conducts system-wide reviews on a regular basis. For example, recent consultation on the Medical Travel Program, which is intended to lead program improvements, we did significant public consultation on that. As part of the system transformation process, I visited personally every community and listened to what residents had to say about what's working and what needs to be improved within the system. This is one of the reasons that we're moving to one territorial health and social services authority, which gives a huge opportunity to improve service standards across the Northwest Territories. I'm not prepared at this time to do an external review of the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority. It might make more sense to wait until we have a single authority when we're actually able to start making some of these territorial program improvements within the system. But once again, I'm happy to sit down with the Member with the department and go through the audit that was done about two years ago to address some of the concerns that the Member may have.
Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
