Mr. Speaker, medical travel is a necessity of life in the North. The prohibitive cost of delivering all services to all 33 NWT communities, paired with the global shortage of healthcare workers, requires Northerners to travel to larger centres to receive specialized care.
Virtual care, specifically Telehealth, has been part of our northern care landscape for decades, helping the North increase client access and reduce costs to our healthcare system. Canada was an early driver of virtual care, but quickly fell behind other nations. Given our growing medical travel costs and the spectre of pandemics, such as the threat of COVID-19, now is the time to increase our use of virtual care. This will enable the GNWT to sharpen the focus on preventive care and to continue to meet the healthcare needs of all Northerners in the most cost-effective way possible.
Well-known northern physician and former NWT Chief Medical Information Officer Dr. Ewan Affleck recently co-chaired the Virtual Care Task Force, a national partnership of medical professionals focused on promoting and growing access to quality healthcare through virtual care. Their final report, which I will table today, was released in February. The Virtual Care Task Force identified five key national recommendations to help address the four main barriers to virtual care. Mr. Speaker, the barriers identified were specific, clear, and solvable:
- Digital inter-operability across the healthcare system to exchange healthcare information;
- Simple registration and licensing to allow physicians to provide virtual care across provincial and territorial boundaries;
- Payment models for virtual care; and
- Medical education and professional development for physicians and medical students as they transition from an analog medical world to a digital one.
Mr. Speaker, we are already setting ourselves up for greater success and access to virtual care. The Northwest Territories, I am proud to say, was identified as the jurisdiction that has come the closest to inter-operability with its electronic medical record system, or single-patient chart. In terms of next steps, registration, licensing, and payment models are barriers that can be addressed through direction from this government.
The demand for virtual care in southern Canada is growing to meet public desire in the digital age. In the North, however, virtual care could literally mean the difference between a person's access to healthcare or not; so not a desire, Mr. Speaker, but a need. Virtual care will improve NWT resident access to essential services in the comfort of their home communities and enable the GNWT to put less money into air travel and more money into actual care, including prevention. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.