First and foremost we should be working with the residents of Fort Liard and Nahanni Butte to restore their confidence in the health care system. We are moving forward to make significant changes in how we provide services. I did have an opportunity to visit Fort Liard and Nahanni Butte and I have been working closely with the public administrator and CEO, trying to find ways to restore that confidence.
If somebody is sick, they should use the health centre. But as a resident of Canada, they do have the right to go wherever they chose and we do have reciprocal billing agreements.
Our challenge isn’t with our ability to ensure that those medically necessary services are paid for, because we have agreements in place. Our challenge is if an individual chooses, under their own choice, to go to, say, Fort Nelson for a doctor’s appointment and then that doctor in turn refers that person to home care or some other diagnostic process, they will often refer within their own system for which we don’t have reciprocal billing agreements. If somebody wants to receive home care and it’s ordered in BC but they want it delivered in Fort Providence, we actually have no records of that order actually taking place, which is, I think, the point the Member is trying to get to.
We need to make an arrangement with BC. But before we do that, we’re actually working on refreshing our agreements with Alberta and Nunavut and that’s going to help inform the discussions with BC, should we choose to go in that direction.
I’ve asked the department to complete a bit of a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it’s actually going to be feasible to establish this specific service agreement for residents of the Deh Cho between the NWT and BC and that will also help inform the discussions. But in the meantime, somebody who wishes to go to BC will not be billed for medically necessary services.