Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In April of this year, there was a system upgrade to our Stanton Territorial Hospital MEDI-patient system that resulted in more than 1,500 diagnostic imaging reports not being returned to the practitioner who had requested them between April 1st and August 6th of 2015. Members of this House were flagged on August 11, 2015, by the Minister of Health, and I’ll stress “that some quality assurance regulators and digital imaging at Stanton were noticed and that some health system patients were affected but were never disclosed the exact impact.” It wasn’t until the following week of August 18th, the Minister, through a CBC radio morning show, disclosed the magnitude of the issue. As of this date, there has been no formal press release or formal health advisory to the public.
My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, I think many of us are still concerned about this situation, so can the Minister give the House and the public at large a formal update and maybe indicate what legal risks are still looming? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for bringing this to the floor of the House. This was a significant issue here in the Northwest Territories within the Department of Health and Social Services and very troubling to both the department and the residents of the Northwest Territories, I’m sure. The physicians, the practitioners here in the Northwest Territories stood up and reviewed every one of the 1,500 files to determine who, if anybody, was at risk, who got information, when they got information and how they got information. At the end of the day, there were eight individuals who should have got information prior to us discovering this problem, and those individuals have been followed up with accordingly.
I do want to take this opportunity to applaud the doctors, the nurses and all the practitioners who stood up to address this issue and to resolve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the Minister giving the opportunity to explain the current situation. My concern today is still about the risk management and the liability when such an issue is before the House and is discovered. So, can the Minister indicate, what is his department’s formal health advisory protocol, given the seriousness of such a situation? Thank you.
When it comes to patient safety and patient care, we will defer to the medical practice on ensuring that the situation is dealt with. At present, when situations like this occur, the first thing that must happen is to stop the problem from continuing, to remove all opportunities for harm. That was done in this particular case. The second step is to follow up with the individuals who may have been impacted, which was also done in this case. At that point we would move forward with some notification to the public, once we understand the magnitude, scope, and the residents have in fact been dealt with. Thank you. Mr. Speaker.
I think I had a very specific question there, so I’ll reword it here. Really there isn’t anything in legislation that protects the public in terms of an issue of this gravity, and the only legislation pursuant to a public health advisory is Section 7 and 20 of the Public Health Act, and unfortunately, it is silent on a situation such as a digital imaging mishap.
So, does the Minister feel as strongly as I do, that a more formal process for health alerting protocol is needed for grave situations, especially for such things as this digital imaging mishap? Thank you.
I do agree with the Member. In fact, I agree so much that when this issue came to my attention, I did ask for a formal external review to be done to help us determine how on earth we didn’t know before August 6th, how the situation happened and how we can, as a system, better respond in the future to make sure that our people are informed in a timely way.
I do also want to recognize, having said that, we still have to recognize the importance of the practitioners and their obligations under a situation like this, which is: stop the harm, work with the patients, then communicate. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again I thank the Minister here. I just want to make one thing perfectly clear that just still doesn’t add up. So, we were reminded multiple times by the Minister of Health that on August 6, 2015, the Department of Health and Social Services was informed of this digital imaging technical issue, and then on the very same day, the vendor was brought in. So, I believe everyone would be a little sceptic that nothing works that timely and this fast in this government.
So, can the Minister indicate, is it possible that this issue was known by the department prior to August 6, 2015?
The external review will help us identify exactly what was known and when. The department was not aware of this particular situation until August 6th. I have had a couple briefings on this particular issue with staff from Stanton and staff from the department and there have been some rumblings out there. In fact, I understand that there were some issues between Yellowknife Health and Social Services and Stanton, but when they reviewed those they thought those were an internal issue and didn’t realize the territorial scope of this problem until August 6th. At that time, and I just want to correct the Member, the issue with the vendor was ticketed, which means they were made aware. The vendor actually didn’t get into Yellowknife until a couple days later. But as soon as the issue became aware, as soon as it was understood that this was not just a communication error between two authorities but this was a territorial issue, the vendors were immediately ticketed. They were ticketed on the 6th. It took them a couple days to get in, but they started working on the problem on that day, once they were officially ticketed.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
