Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Chair. Increase of four positions are three full time and one part time. Two positions, new positions from other sources. The Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative from Health Canada is a project manager, medical travel, Yellowknife; a policy officer, health benefits, Yellowknife; another position, internal transfer, resource, paid internally from existing resources, system navigator in Yellowknife. One position, a new initiative to develop clinical governance, is a chief physician advisor, which is actually a 0.75 full-time equivalent, Yellowknife.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The future long-term goal of the health structure, if we’re talking about structure as in personnel, physician services, other health services in the territory, we are hoping that we have a system that is where we have physicians that are available equally to all residents of the Northwest Territories. That’s ultimately our objective.

Now, we’re probably going to have a lot of difficulty providing medical services, as in physician services, on a full-time basis to all communities. That’s going to be something that we’re probably never going to achieve, and that is...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize two Pages from the Deninoo School in Fort Resolution: Rayleen McKay and Tianna Simon.

We will do everything we can to speed the process up with the understanding that this review is going to be cross referenced to insured services, appeal process, two parts of the health benefits review that need to be done with extreme diligence. The case file review is something that we’re currently using and will continue to use until there are changes in this health benefits policy. On a case-by-case basis, we will use the case file reviews in situations where we think that an individual, or an individual has come to us through some medium that they need to have a second opinion. Then we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The three pilot projects are for renal care, diabetes, and mental health and addictions.

We are going to be putting an RFP out for medevac services. This spring we are starting the evaluation of the service that we currently have. The detailed information we get from the current medevac services is going to give us the information that we need to draft an RFP that’s going to be able to provide the best service to the patients possible. The RFP would not indicate that we need a decentralized model, that you have to have a plane in Norman Wells or you have to have a plane in Inuvik. It’s not going to request that kind of detail. It’s going to request that the best service possible...

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.