Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before my time as Minister of Health and Social Services, there was a Minister of Health and Social Services who thought it was a great idea to move to a territorial pool of physicians across the territories. I think he is sitting across the hall right now asking me a question. It was fantastic direction because the net result of that is by having a territorial pool of physicians, having all the physicians as employees of the one organization as opposed to multiple organizations, they all had some responsibility or authority to engage with the territorial system. We have been able to build on that, and as a result, we have been able to actually get more physicians hired and located in the Northwest Territories than we have ever been able to before. We used to struggle miserably trying to find permanent physicians in places like Beaufort Delta and Inuvik. We actually have been able to find and retain some doctors in those communities. Yes, there is always turnover, but we are getting people to hire in. We are still having some difficulty, though, in the smaller communities like Behchoko and Norman Wells where we still have to rely on some locums. We are exploring those exact types of scenarios that the Member has described about maybe finding some people that are maybe located in Yellowknife and I guess a locum type support in Norman Wells but being the consistent person going back and forth. We still are not all the way there. We are having difficulties finding individuals who want to do that, but at a territorial level, the direction to move to a single medical system, I think has paid off significantly because we do have a stable core of doctors in Beaufort Delta. We almost never had that. We have had much better luck getting physicians in places like Fort Smith and Hay River in particular. Yes, more work needs to be done. We believe it is still a valid process, and we are trying to find people that might be interested in doing exactly the things the Member has described. Thank you.
Glen Abernethy on Mr. Beaulieu's Question
On October 5th, 2017. See this statement in context.
Mr. Beaulieu's Question
Members' Questions for Ministers
October 4th, 2017
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