Glen Abernethy

My initial discussions with the department, we’re looking for a similar type case where we have individuals with similar needs, but we do know right now that there’s a huge variety of residents in the Northwest Territories. We have some residents who require 24/7 care with multiple individuals and others that are more in the independent setting, but require significant medical supports. So at this time I’m not prepared to say that we have found a catchment, a group of individuals who have similar challenges that we may be able to repatriate up here, but I have directed the department to do a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today are Ian Rennie, legislative counsel with the Department of Justice, and Natasha Brotherston, the manager of policy and legislation with the Department of Health and Social Services.

I am pleased to be here today to discuss Bill 4, Health Information Act. This bill is detailed and complex. It deals with highly sensitive content – the personal health information of patients – and is fundamental to enabling the health system to provide better care to residents of the Northwest Territories.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner has repeatedly called on this government to move forward with health-specific privacy legislation. The Information and Privacy Commissioner has supported the Health Information Act as a way to ensure that patients’ information is properly protected...

We will be putting in and developing an evaluation framework around this particular model to see how it’s working, to make sure it’s meeting the needs of our residents, patients and professionals in the individual communities. I’ve said it before and I’d love to say it again, I’d love to invite committee out to see staff and see the operations once we get it up and running. I ask for a couple of months, but then I’d love to invite the Social Programs committee out there to see the operations up and running. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Department of Health and Social Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department of MACA are working together on a ground and highway rescue strategy. This particular EMR response tool is with respect to direct contact out of health centres to the regional centres, and we can coordinate things like medevacs out of there, but they will be going to the communities where there are airports as coordinated by the on-site people, the coordinator in the EMR office and a dispatcher in the EMR office. It will not be dispatching airplanes or helicopters to highway situations.

Before any decisions are made, we do need to understand the caseload, the client load, and the individuals that may be able to be repatriated. I intend to share that information with committee and we can have a discussion on what might be the most appropriate location and how we, as an Assembly, decide where we want to invest our dollars, remembering that we want to keep people as close to home if we can find a way, and we have residents from all over the Territories, so there might be multiple opportunities here.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I actually can’t remember the exact number of clients that we had in there. I actually just talked about it a couple of days ago when we were having our budget dialogue, but it is about 100 adults and about 100 youth, give or take. We know it’s incredibly expensive. During the last round of supps, I asked for $2.5 million for youth and another I think it was $2.5 million or $2.6 million for adults. So there is a significant cost. There’s multi-millions of dollars a year.

I take the Member’s point from her statement where we need to dig into these files and review them...

Yes, please, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “NWT Anti-Poverty Roundtable Final Report, November 28-29, 2013, Detah, Northwest Territories.”

Mr. Speaker, we are making the final preparations for our new Med-Response clinical support line for community health workers. This innovative project is a priority in the Department of Health and Social Services’ strategic plan and advances the 17th Legislative Assembly’s goal of ensuring a fair and sustainable health care system. It uses technology to connect people with services and it will be an important part of our effective, efficient health system.

The new Med-Response service will provide community health care workers throughout all Northwest Territories regions with a single phone...