Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It seems our health system's on a pretty clear trajectory, which is that its deficit keeps going up and the number of services we offer keeps going down. And, Mr. Speaker, I recognize that many of these are due to the inability and the struggle to find specialized services. And the latest victim in this is our rheumatology program, which has recently been discontinued and transferred down to Alberta. However, Mr. Speaker, after this program was cancelled, we all found out in the news that perhaps it wasn't so hard to find a rheumatologist. And in fact, there was one who had been working with the health system and had intentions to start a multidisciplinary arthritis program. But in order to do that, that rheumatologist would have needed an extra added health position to ensure the continuity of care. And what happened here is asking the health authority for an extra position takes time; I get that. But over a year went by with no response and eventually the rheumatologist gave up.
But he tried one more time with another plan that would not have just as much not continuity of care but at least it would ensure we are providing some rheumatology services in the North. Well, once again HHS didn't get it together, and we didn't get that plan. And so the plan became we'll ship this down to Alberta. And, Mr. Speaker, I think we have to stop relying on Alberta's healthcare system for increased specialized services. We see their wait times. We see the struggles they are going through. And, Mr. Speaker, we need to invest in these.
I'm also not convinced that the math is being done because now what you have is you have an increase in outofterritory services and payments we're making to the Alberta health system, and you have an increase to our ever and growing medical travel budget, Mr. Speaker. If we just worked with the specialist, who was initially here, to provide those services, work to slowly grow the practice and provide that continuity of care, I believe our patients would be better off. And, Mr. Speaker, I'm not convinced that the department worked with those patients because I am now hearing from many people, who have rheumatoid arthritis, of the struggles they are going through to work in that Alberta system. They much would prefer to have access to a rheumatologist here and someone who has that continuity of care to fill the gaps when a rheumatologist is not in our system.
I will have questions for the Minister of health about what we can do to bring this service back to the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member for Monfwi.
