Tom Beaulieu

In my response to MLA Menicoche, I indicated that we had hired a policy officer to review health benefits. That review of a second opinion is within that review.

Yes, I would.

The federal portion of medical travel is $3.2 million. There are many factors that are involved in reducing medical travel costs. Inflation is an issue. Any contracts within the medical travel system could also be an issue, depending on how much we’re able to sign contracts for, such as medevac, ground services and so on. These are things that are very difficult to predict. Also, the usage of some of the systems that are made available, how effective they are at using the system. The electronic system is designed to reduce this and, actually, mainly designed to provide a better service to the...

We have that ability now. We are able to do multi-year funding project by project.

Thank you. I don’t know how long the promise of reviewing medical travel has gone on. I do know that at this time we are a bit behind in our schedule for reviewing medical travel. Like I indicated in the House yesterday, there are a lot of pressures in our system, a lot of pressures to do a lot of different things in the system. As we had the human resources in the department allocated to certain projects, this is one of the projects which is kind of stumbling out of the blocks, because there’s a lot of real high-priority issues for the department. We are planning to do a review of it and we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Our first plan A is to try and retain the THSSI funding. We are on the schedule of the federal Minister, and when the federal Minister wishes to discuss the plan or the furtherance of the THSSI funding with us, then at that time we will have that discussion. If there is no discussion and the money is sunsetted or lapsed, then we will need to come back to the Legislative Assembly to fill the gaps. We really don’t think it’s an option to reduce medical travel by that amount. We really don’t think it’s an option to lay off six nurse practitioners. We really don’t think it...

We have no problem providing that information. If we are able to pull that information, the department is listening and is able to pull that information together before the end of the review, we will provide that in the House. If not, we will provide that to the Members at a later date.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department recognizes that prevention is probably the key to long-term savings for the department. Some of the money that we’re putting into the system on prevention, at the end of the day, downstream, will have positive financial benefits to the department. So that is probably the main thing.

In as far as medical travel goes, we recognize that maybe medical travel is not as efficient as it should be. There are a lot of pressures on medical travel. People put pressures on medical travel and sometimes individuals that may not be eligible for an escort, as an example...

We don’t have the detail of the level of discussion between officials for the GNWT and the federal government through ANSI, the federal government, Aboriginal Affairs. So we can provide that information to the membership or to this Member. It shouldn’t be difficult to pull that information together. We can pull that information and provide that to the Member.

When we request reports and we RFP work with the intention that the company is doing work for the Department of Health and Social Services, for that intent, if we are to release their work beyond our own coffers, beyond Health and Social Services, then we do have to return back to the company to see if it is okay to release their work that was initially requested by us for us.