Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Ms. Mathison.

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. I believe the second part of that question was, again, the explanation of the increase in the ’14-15 to ’16-15. Ms. Mathison.

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, this is part of the budgeting process I don’t always understand. We got the supplement in ’13-14. I don’t think we told people no in ’14-15 this year. So, I assume that if it’s going to be $19 million, it will be coming out of some other budget. So any comments on that would be appreciated.

Just for efficiency I’ll throw in one more here. The Minister knows we’ve been working since the first day of the 16th Assembly on increasing the

efficiency of medical travel costs. The stat was 50 percent of medical travel patients were on the streets an hour after they arrived at Stanton and got released. All those sorts of things. We’ve been dealing with this call forwarding, or whatever it’s called, on-call business. What efficiencies have we realized, and if we haven’t, maybe it’s just improved service, which I realize is part of the equation. When are we going to see those efficiencies as we’re now in our eighth year of discussing? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yesterday I actually talked in some detail about the medical travel modernization, and the Medical Travel Policy has gone to the Standing Committee on Social Programs who has given it back to us with a number of comments and whatnot. We’ve started to make those changes and we’re going to be submitting that to Cabinet for consideration. Once it’s approved, we will have the foundation document, which is the base Medical Travel Policy. Of that, based on discussions I’ve had with committee earlier, there’s going to be a number of pillars that connect on to that Medical Travel Policy.

Currently, we’ve actually begun some of that work and we have a public engagement process underway on patient supports or escorts. This began in December 2014 and the group that’s doing that work have been around the Northwest Territories. What we wanted to do is we wanted to get them into large communities, small communities, on road, off road, air only, those types of things. So far they’ve gone to Hay River, Tuk, Inuvik, Behchoko, and they’ve also visited staff as well as residents or patients of ours that are visiting the Larga House. We anticipate the stakeholder engagement around this component will be done at the end of April. Just as a note, as of January 16th they had actually had some one-on-one engagements with over 123 people. They’re also reviewing all the information that we have collected over the years. Yellowknife, Fort Good Hope and Trout Lake will be engaged before the current engagement process is over.

It’s anticipated that the next one we’ll be working on is benefits eligibility. That engagement is going to begin in July and we wanted to do the medical travel appeal engagement in 2015-2016. We’re hoping to have this work done, like I said, the engagement done towards the end of April. These will help inform those other areas to make specific policy around those particular components of the Medical Travel Policy.

For the money I’ll go to the director of finance.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Ms. Mathison.

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess that means that will be happening the year following. I appreciated the Minister’s response, although I couldn’t hear an answer to whether we’re ever going to realize some efficiencies from the massive amounts of work and investment that we put into approving our medical travel.

I saw lots of activity, I heard about lots of activity, but I didn’t hear a response to when are we going to realize some efficiency. We’ve invested hugely in putting teleconferencing into every community and training. We’ve been sure they’re being used and so on. We’ve got doctors on call 24/7 and we’ve got

the diagnostic imaging and electronic communications of those. Huge, huge things, I would think, to increase our efficiencies there. I’m not seeing it translated here. I did hear a lot of activity from the Minister but I didn’t hear the sorts of things I’m mentioning that we’ve been investing in big time, electronic data records and so on, is being realized through improved efficiencies and, hopefully, some reduced costs. I’ll just throw that out there, and if the Minister has additional, I’d welcome. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you. I know the Member and all Members have expressed frustrations around medical travel in the past. I too have expressed significant frustration around medical travel. I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody who hasn’t.

Part of the problem that we’ve had around medical travel is the clarity around it. It doesn’t seem to meet some of the people’s needs. With these changes that are coming forward, it will be more clear. We’ll clearly articulate it so it’s understood and applied consistently across the Territories. That in and of itself will reduce some of the complications that we have, but it doesn’t mean that less people are necessarily going to use it. But the points you made of the telehealth and whatnot, those types of things, we are seeing some results but we also continue to have many other reasons that people are coming out on medical travel.

I would like to point out that we did a soft launch of Med-Response and this is one of the initiatives we said we believe we are going to see some real positive results. We did a soft launch in November and we’re looking at going live next week with a full hard launch on Med-Response. Since their soft launch, and this was up to January 15th , they

coordinated 312 clinical consults from all authorities, 152 which were NWT air ambulance flights. They tracked nine calls that were initially requested in air ambulance dispatch, but after the conversation the work through Med-Response and the coordinator response didn’t actually result in a medical travel or an air ambulance call.

We’ve actually been able to already coordinate at least one aircraft to pick up two patients from different communities both going to Edmonton and return them on the same aircraft, getting some economies of scale by utilizing the same plane for more than one person. These are the types of things we know we will start to see more of as we go for a full hard launch on Med-Response. This is just one of the areas that we’re making progress and we’re starting to see some results. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out over time and whether or not there are even more opportunities to get some economies of scale and opportunities to

control some of our future expenditures in areas like this. So, there are good things happening.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. We are on page 215, supplementary health programs, operations expenditure summary, $32.361 million. Agreed?

Thank you, committee. Page 216, supplementary health programs, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions, $21.890 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 217, funding allocated to health and social service authorities, information item. Any questions?

Thank you. Page 218, lease commitments, information item. Any questions?

Thank you. Page 219, work performed on behalf of others, information item. Any questions?