Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I also had a constituent reach out to me recently about locums and medical travel. Specifically, there seems to be some confusion with locums still about what is a service that can be appropriately redirected to medical travel. Is that issue being cleared up by NTHSSA, or is that something that the public administrator is looking at? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Sorry, Mr. Speaker. I'm not sure what the question is. The locum travel and medical travel, I?
Member to clarify your question. You're still on number one.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's like baseball.
Mr. Speaker, I'm trying to be quick so what I will try and illustrate for the Minister is locums sometimes direct their patients to medical travel for concerns that that patient might have for specialist services. Then the patient finds out, oh wait, that is not actually a service that is available through medical travel and they get very confused, and it seems to be happening somewhat regularly over the last few years with locums. Is there a process that the Minister is aware of to clarify policies for locums such that they are not booking medical travel unnecessarily? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when our physicians are onboarded, they are provided with some orientation. I'm not sure the extent of that orientation. However, we do have a lot of locums that come in. The process through a physician, and that is the problem I think that they're relating to, is not everything is an insured service. So if it's not an insured service, then it's not covered by our health care and therefore if there are certain things that a locum may say that -- a patient may come in and ask for them, I can't speak to what these things are unless I have details. So what I would say is if the Member wanted to provide me some examples that I could bring back to the NTHSSA, I could have NTHSSA do some kind of information sheet that kind of guides locums with the referral process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for that. I can speak broadly to my constituent's issue, which is that of dermatology. I've personally experienced this with a locum putting me through this process and reversing this process as well, and it was around allergy testing, so those are two examples I can think of.
Mr. Speaker, it's just -- I really want to impress upon the Minister that if we are to rely on locums that there is a procedure or policy that they are very aware of, such that medical travel is not something that a constituent or a patient has to deal with that entire process, which is also complicated, and then be told they're not going. So can I get at least a commitment from the Minister to look at some of that policy piece or standard operating procedure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for identifying two of those.
However, I guess based on the circumstances and where you're living, those may be considered something that would be considered under medical travel. However, if there are specialists coming to, say if it's for Yellowknife, they may be traveling in at a certain time and therefore they would be put onto a waitlist for that. I can't speak to what if, so I guess if there are certain specific instances, I would recommend that the Member bring those forward through my office.
But in the meantime I know that we are working within medical travel because of having so many locums and casual nurses in our health centres that actually do the referrals, we are looking at putting in more positions to be able to be case managers so that way -- once it gets to the case manager, then the case manager will know the process and therefore can speak to the locums to have those conversations. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral question. Member from Frame Lake.
