Thank you, Madam Speaker. We have more than 13,000 patient cases that are managed by the medical travel system a year, so it’s a significant load. For the individuals that are going through medical travel, I mean, for the most part, they’re focused on their diagnosis and treatment. For many of them, most of them, the medical travel system seems to work, but as I’ve heard from Members, as I’ve heard from the public, as I heard from the MLA again today with the particular case that he’s brought forward, there are people that are frustrated with the medical travel system. We know we can do better, and we need to do better for our residents.
The Medical Travel Policy is currently under review. We want to have a Medical Travel Policy that is hassle free for all of our patients. In part of the modernization we’re looking at improving our patient experiences, we’re looking for developing a clear policy that allows for change and some flexibility. We need to create a program, efficiencies to help us with cost control and cost containment as we move forward.
On January 16th I had an opportunity to meet with
MLAs and talk about the review, and I committed and showed at that time a bit of a work plan. We are committed to having that review done and a policy for discussion with the MLAs early in the fiscal year. It’s going to be a multiple approach. I mean, we’re going to work on a territorial policy, but there are also sub-categories that we need to look at, things like escorts, things like co-payments, things like patient boarding as well. We’re looking at having an appeal process that doesn’t currently exist. All of that’s going to happen starting in the fiscal year coming. We will have some policies to have the discussions with MLAs on.