Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services about the issue of no-shows for health care appointments, which has been a problem for a number of years, and I know it's a frustration both for patients who can't get into the system and for practitioners who are wasting their time or wasting our resources when we could have practitioners seeing patients.
So I saw in the 2019-2020 health authority reports that there were stats up to then for no-show rates and how they've changed over the years previous to that. Can the Minister commit to providing Members with the most up-to-date statistics up to this year on no-show rates for health care appointments and how the trends may have gotten better or worse over the past five years? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I appreciate the question and I think I'll be able to take this back to NTHSSA, because this is something that I have also asked for. I wanted to know the stats. I want to know how many patients are being seen in the clinics, especially here in the capital, and are those numbers increasing? What are the waitlists? So I know that they are working on some data right now, and I most recently spoke with the public administrator, and they are getting ready to provide a briefing to me on some of this data and when I do have this data, I'll be able to have that information shared with the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So what is being done now? We've known for a number of years this is a problem. So what's being done now to try to reduce the number of no-show appointments, healthcare appointments, such as automated reminders or phone call reminders by administrative staff? You know, a number of us know these kinds of things are done in other contexts like dental appointments so what has taken so long for us to come up with strategies around no-show appointments in primary care? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what I do -- what I can say and for the amount of information that I can -- that I know of right now is that within the waitlist, like anybody who contacts or does the email call back, they will offer to be put onto waitlists and so anytime that there are openings, they will contact people from that waitlist to fill those openings to see if they can come in. The problem is, is that many times those are short notice and it's hard for people to get across the city to those appointments. This is something that was raised even when we were most recently at our health Minister meetings, is in the southern provinces they do do online booking but what's happening is, is people are booking in all of the different areas and then they're not cancelling when they get an appointment. So this is a problem that has actually came up at our meeting because we can't -- we're not allowed to bill, there's no -- to bill people for missing appointments or things like that under the Canada Health Act. So, I know within the department, we really take those appointments, they are important, and so we do utilize that waitlist, and what I can do is I can follow up with the, especially here in the capital, to see how they're managing those waitlists. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister for Health and Social Service. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you Mr. Speaker, just on that specific point about waitlists or cancellation lists, I think there may be some confusion about this, and I would ask the Minister to try to clarify this, because I've heard directly from primary care physicians, practitioners, as of a few weeks ago that there is in fact no cancellation list, there's no waiting list, and we don't have any mechanism for trying to fill spots that are open on a same-day basis so I would very much appreciate if the Minister could clarify even what's currently happening in Yellowknife Primary Care and then what's being done to improve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I can follow up with NTHSSA. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister for Health and Social Services.
