Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think there’s been a lot of discussion and that in dealing with the Supplementary Health Program. One of the key areas that the MLAs asked be looked at was addressing the working poor that didn’t have coverage, any existing supplementary or any sort of health coverage at all. The department has done the work, is now working on trying to fill that gap, and it seems to be a gap there now of the working poor, and the department is bringing information together to try to fill that gap.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The long-term care facilities need to be located near larger centres where we have physicians and nursing care and so on. Right now it makes it very difficult to put long-term care in the smaller communities where that service is not available 24/7. That’s been the issue in the past. Because physicians are not available 24/7, it’s difficult to keep long-term care in the smaller centres like Aklavik. Thank you.

Right now we have three public administrators in place of boards. That is at Stanton, Beaufort-Delta and Hay River. In our initial discussions in the communities, the communities had indicated that they would like to see the boards put back in with representatives from the communities. We would like to consult with the new boards or with the current boards. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to wait until all the boards are in place before we start to make a move on this. We’re going right to the communities and indicating that that’s what we wish to do. So we have actually had the very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is unfortunate that often I have made a Member’s statement that acknowledges the passing of Tu Nedhe people. I do this regrettably, but acknowledge that passing away is part of life and each should be acknowledged. Since December 2011 four Tu Nedhe citizens have passed away.

Georgina Victoria Fabien, born July 30, 1958, passed away on December 2, 2011, at the age of only 53. Georgina passed away while she was asleep. Georgina is survived by her husband, Darrow Andrews; her son, Jason Barrens; her sisters Rita, Angelina, Kaye, Helen and Lorraine; her brothers Lawrence...

Some of the telehealth communications have prevented the necessity to use medical travel, if that’s what the question is. In a sense, the doctor was able to assist the nurse or another doctor at the other end of the telehealth screen so that individuals could be properly diagnosed by the person that’s with the patient. In a sense, I guess it has lessened some of the medical travel costs by using telehealth.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to do recruitment. We work with Human Resources to work with each of the health and social services authorities on recruitment. We do have a joint recruitment system. Then once the doctors accept jobs or whatnot, they would then have an option to go to where they wish to go, in most cases. When we’re recruiting for doctors in general, usually the doctors end up here, in the history. We have a website, we are working with a couple of universities in the South where we’re working with – they’re like interns I suppose, but I forget the name, they’re residents I...

I actually don’t know if that includes hip surgery. What I do know is that the operating room seems to have resolved all of the sterilization issues and continues to work on the sterilization issues. As I indicated, the hospital is old and they are doing their best to maintain the pH levels at the operating table. But specific to actual hip replacement surgeries, I am not 100 percent sure on that, but I can get back to the Member on that. Thank you.

Yes, we can do that.

We will be working with our partners at the Bureau of Statistics. We’re going to include questions on prescription drug use the next time we do addictions surveys, the general addictions survey. That survey is scheduled to begin in late 2012.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The information is not available because the department does not track use of opiates. However, we do have the NWT Pharmacy Act which will give us the power to set up the regulations, but we don’t have the funding to set it up. Health Canada does track non-insured health benefits prescription use, if they’re going to that program to purchase the prescription drugs; but if they pay cash, we don’t track that either. Thank you.