Marci Cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following up on my Member’s statement, I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell this House what the status of the recruitment of doctors in regional centers is today? Thank you.
Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, recognizing that it's somewhat fluid, I can give the Member a bit of an update of where we are today on physicians. In Fort Smith, there's 4.5 positions of which one is filled by a local physician. In Yellowknife, there's 29 family practitioners, 26 are filled by local physicians. In the Tlicho, there are two family practitioner positions. Two of them are filled, but those physicians happen to be located in Yellowknife and split their time between the Tlicho and Yellowknife. The Sahtu, there are two family practitioner positions. They're both vacant at this time. In the Beaufort Delta, there's nine family practitioner positions established, three and a half of them are filled on a full-time basis by local practitioners. In the Deh Cho, there's three family practitioner positions. None of them are filled by local practitioners at this time. In Hay River, we have five family practitioner positions, two are filled by local practitioners at this time.
In a number of the cases, Mr. Speaker, we have regularly recurring physicians. For instance, in the Deh Cho we have a physician who isn’t permanently residing in the Deh Cho or at Fort Simpson but returns on a regular basis, so it's a repeat locum. We do utilize locums from time to time to address things like shortages, when some of our staff physicians go on holidays, take training development. So there's always a need for some level of locum physicians. Ultimately it's our goal to hire and fill all these positions, preferably in the regions where the positions happen to be located. But since we've moved to a territorial authority, we have the ability to have our physicians move around to provide backfill.
I think the Member's statement was very clear and the direction he outlined in his statement is the exact direction that we're moving towards as we speak. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'd like to thank the Minister for that response and I'd like to ask the Minister if all of the specialist positions at Stanton are filled at this time?
Mr. Speaker, to date, or currently, there is 21 established specialty positions located in Stanton, 16 of those are filled by resident physicians. On top of that, we have a number of unfunded physician specialists who come in from time to time. There isn’t enough demand to justify a full-time specialty in some areas. So we have some locums who come up on a regular basis, as well as the 21 that we've established.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister if, aside from the Tlicho doctors, if there are other doctors that are splitting their time between Yellowknife and the regions.
Not at this time, Mr. Speaker. This is early in the life of the new territorial authority, but this is some work that actually started a number of years ago. I think the Member was actually Minister of Health and Social Services when we started exploring the possibility of territorial physician services.
With the advent of a single authority, we have the ability to actually roll that out in a little bit more thorough manner. In the past we had a situation where we had one authority competing with another authority for physicians creating competition within the territory itself. Now, they're working together, and I can say the Territorial Medical Director has just recently been working with the Medical Director in the Beaufort Delta and together they're participating in a recruitment drive in Vancouver to promote rural physician services and try to gain and garner interest in the Northwest Territories as a place to come and practice. Whether you're in Yellowknife or in one of our more remote locations, Inuvik, Simpson, Norman Wells, examples.
Maybe the question will be obvious, but I'd like to just get in on the record. Has the Minister seen an improvement in recruitment as a result of a new direction that the department is taking with health transformation?
Mr. Speaker, we’ve really only moved to the single authority for the last couple of months. We need a bit more to time to assess, but I can say that the work that the Member started when he was a Minister to bring more of a territorial model together in allowing physicians in one region to have credentials in institutions like Stanton did actually help us to recruit some physicians and hire them in remote locations recognizing that they can also have some privileges in locations like Stanton. Working together as a system and having the doctors across the territorial system has helped. By moving to a single authority we believe we have more opportunities to continue to enhance that important work that was begun in the last Assembly.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
