Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments. We did talk this afternoon during question period about the mental health workers and some of the stress that the individuals that exist in the communities are experiencing. I will just add to what I said earlier today, that for individuals, our employees, who may be under stress or experiencing some levels of difficulty as a result of their daily jobs, we do have programs like the Employee and Family Assistance Program and I would encourage the Member, as I would encourage all Members, to remind their constituents of this program and encourage them to utilize it, if and when they’re in stress. I did say it earlier today, some of the backfill and some of the temporary coverage, when we move to a single system those types of things will be easier to deal with because we’ll have a larger pool to select individuals. So, it’s just another advantage of a more integrated, collaborative system here in the Northwest Territories for the 43,000 residents that we have.
I do hear the Member about the nursing situation in Wrigley. We’re committed to providing first responder training but we’ve also got Med-Response that can help the practitioners. I hear that the practitioner’s leaving, so obviously we’re going to need to work with the current authority to ensure that they’re doing some planning around how they hope to fill that position and possibly training somebody from the community, or trying to recruit somebody from the community.
I do also appreciate the Member’s comments on medical travel, and I agree. Things like test results and other things, we should be able to find a better way to do it, and I think we’re getting there and we’re starting to see some progress, but it’s going to take a lot of individuals to agree, practitioners as well as patients. So, we do have some work to do there, but I do believe we’re starting to see some better results.
Just for the record, around medical travel, the Standing Committee on Social Programs did review the draft revised Medical Travel Policy and they gave us a bunch of comments that we’re going through. We are hoping that that policy will be effective, or go live during this session, barring any unforeseen circumstances. On top of that, that policy is part, and we’ve gone through a number of presentations, the policy is the foundation on which all these components of medical travel hang on. Currently, as the Member has talked about, there is some public engagement on the patient support, the escorts component of medical travel, and this began, actually, in December 2014 and consultations have been held in Hay River, Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, Behchoko and the Larga
House in Edmonton where a number of our residents go. This stakeholder engagement on patient supports is on track and its completion date is set for April 2015. This will give us the tools we need to actually revise the escort policy. So, as of January 16th we actually had over 123 people who
have engaged in one-on-one interviews and different focus groups. Yellowknife, Fort Good Hope and Trout Lake will be engaged before the current engagement process is over. So, groups and programs that have been engaged to date are Stanton medical travel, seniors, community and our Aboriginal leaders, Nursing Leadership Forum has been asked, the Medical Directors Forum has been engaged and others have been recommended by different department leadership. We anticipate finishing the escort portion, the investigation portion shortly.
We’re also anticipating doing a second one on benefits and eligibility engagement. We believe this is going to start in July. So we’re following the timeline that was originally given to committee on that and every effort will be made to select communities different than the ones we went to last time. When we go into communities, we want on-road, we want off-road, we want small, rural, we want large populations, we want smaller populations. We’re trying to get a diverse group as we go out on these community visits so we’re going to go with the benefits and eligibility in July. We’re also going to do, which I think is a really important part, the appeals process in 2015-16. So we’ll have the vast majority of the Medical Travel Policy and its components done in the life of this government. There will still be some that will continue on.
With respect to medevacs – two hours, depending on weather – weather is the one condition that we cannot control, but with the new contract starting April 1st , we are two hours into small communities in
the Northwest Territories, barring anything that the weather throws at us. I want, like the Member, to restore confidence to our residents in the Medical Travel Program and the new medical contract we have, in addition to supports provided my Med-Response, I believe will go a long way to restoring that confidence. I know there is a loss of confidence in some of the Deh Cho communities and I’m looking forward to travelling with the Member to the Deh Cho communities this spring and hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to talk about all of these things.