Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I spoke about the young person who was hit by a skidoo and I wanted to ask, after she was taken to the local health centre and assessed, it was only after two days.
Do you know any reasons why it took two days to get her medevaced out of that community?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been briefed on the situation. I would be happy to have a conversation with the Member, but I’m not prepared to speak about an individual or her individual case here in the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, on the medical travel, is that common practice when somebody is seriously injured in the community in the Northwest Territories that it takes a couple days to medevac the person out? Is that in the policy?
Mr. Speaker, medical travel and medevac are two different policies. With respect to medevacs, obviously we want to get the individuals out of the communities and to appropriate care in as timely a manner as possible. There are obviously some situations where timing might be affected, but we do attempt to get individuals out as quickly as possible.
Once again, I would be happy to talk to the Member in private about the individual case. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. I’m just looking at the situation here for a medevac. Quickly as possible is probably two days in this situation to get this young lady out in a life and death situation. Then when she gets to Edmonton, the doctors give a different assessment. Are the assessments communicated with communities when there are serious incidents like this? Are these doctors notified and saying, get this person out as quick as possible? In this case it was two days.
What type of situation is there with the health centres when a situation is an emergency where the person needs to get out as quickly as possible?
Mr. Speaker, it’s difficult to answer the questions without getting into the specifics of the individual and I’m not prepared to speak about the individual case. If an individual is injured in a community, usually the community health nurses will be in touch with the Stanton emerg if that’s the particular location where a doctor is available and where somebody needs to go to.
We are moving forward with Med-Response, which is actually a program that will give all the health centres and all the communities direct access to a physician who will then help coordinate medical travel and expedite the process where appropriate. That system goes live on April 1st and we’re looking forward to that system. Once it goes live, I would love to invite the Social Programs committee to come to the location where it is and meet the staff and look at the types of services we’re providing. But it will improve this type of response in the future, recognizing that there are always outside influences, such as weather and other things, that could possibly affect medical travel.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
I look forward to the review of the medical travel in this situation. It has certainly failed her in this case here.
I want to ask the Minister, is it a policy when a patient from any community requests an escort in this type of situation, is an escort then automatically granted or is it within the power of the nurse to deny the medical escort for a patient?
Thank you. Once again, medical travel and medevacs are different things recovered under different policies. We are currently doing the review, which I’ve talked about a number of times in this House, on the Medical Travel Policy and I look forward to sharing those results and that progress with Members as we move forward.
With respect to medevacs, we are currently out for an RFP. The RFP closed last week and we hope to have a provider for air ambulance in the coming while here, but when it comes to medevacs, the ability to have an escort could be dependent on a number of things, plane sizes and all these types of things. So the answer isn’t immediate and it isn’t an immediate yes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
