Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are actually for the Minister of Health and Social Services following up on previous questions that I've been asking earlier this week.
With regard to the new public administrator, there's lots of sort of concern and anxiety and worry going around about possible, you know, budget cuts associated with this role. So can the Minister clarify is the public administrator's focus simply on finding cost savings, or is the public administrator also going to be focusing on how to actually improve delivery of primary care in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the role of the public administrator is to -- as the Member has said, is to do both. Not necessarily to come in now and then -- but to make the work plan so that way all of the things that I highlighted yesterday in this House on recruitment and retention, you know, the historic deficit of the NTHSSA has been hanging over the NTHSSA and being able to be strategic in how -- because they've been focusing on just how to manage within that system. So this is support to that to be able to look at how we're providing care in the Northwest Territories, looking internally and working with the executive in the NTHSSA to ensure that, you know, what we're spending on health care, ensuring that the end user is getting access to care. So it's improving the services while also, you know, looking at internally, yes, there might be some things that we are going to be having to change internally because of where we are with our -- you know, with the deficit budget year after year. So we will have to -- the PA will be responsible as the governing council before was responsible to ensure that they look at in building their budgets. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I am heartened being able to take away from that that there is a focus on actually improving the patient experience and delivery of care for patients. So given the rumors of impending cuts, can the Minister assure us that we will not see cuts to frontline health care practitioners? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, in all the conversations that I've had with the PA is to look internally to see how we can improve frontline services. And so by improving frontline services, I've -- you know, that is -- that would not be meaning cuts. We are having issues accessing care. We've heard it over the years, you know, this is not something that's new. It's grown over the years. So the priority that -- you know, within the direction and under myself, with the PA, has been to ensure that frontline services are not touched, but how can we improve them and expand them with what we have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, finally, can patients expect to see the closure of any specialist services offered by Stanton Territorial Hospital or regional hospitals, meaning will patients now need to travel out of territory for treatment when they could currently access that within the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Minister, that's pretty in the weeds for me but I can tell you right now whatever services that we are trying to provide in the Northwest Territories, we only want to improve and enhance. That is why we're also looking at modernizing our medical travel. That doesn't mean that we're going to expand medical travel services so everybody's flying more. It's modernizing it so that way we're looking at it so that when people need to travel, they're travelling, but how can we make sure that they're not needing to travel as much. And so that does not mean to be closing down specialized services. Those specialized services that we have, we want to try to maintain. However, the workforce across Canada is becoming harder and harder to recruit some of those areas of those specialists so, you know, working with Alberta to try and ensure that we can, you know, that we can be working with them to ensure that our programs are, you know, that are more closer to the residents than having to travel. But with saying that, you know, we will continue to manage within the system that we have and the health care personnel that we have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.
