Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions were baked into my statement so it shouldn't come as a surprise to the health Minister.
Mr. Speaker, what is the ideal panel size for a care team, and what workforce requirements do we need to meet to achieve it? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the ideal panel size depends on many factors, and that's the complicated part of it. There's no single standard number. Panel size vary widely. So what may happen in the capital might be different in some of our regional centres based on patient complexity, provider type, team makeup, clinical capacity. Any approach also needs to consider cultural safety, social complexity, chronic disease needs, and the realities of remote practice.
So the department is developing a patient attachment guideline that will support an equity-focused, complexity-based approach to panel management. This goal is to ensure patients receive stable, relationship-based care, not just assignment to a provider, and to determine the workforce needed to support safe, sustainable panel sizes across the territory. And that will be coming as part of the framework that's coming in the spring. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that timeline. And I understand that it is perhaps a bit more complex than I've made it to sound, but I appreciate that that work is going on.
Mr. Speaker, what is our target maximum wait time for a resident to be triaged and access a health care provider in their panel based on urgency? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Right now there is no standard exists for this at all. So what we're trying to do is, within that framework, is to look at that patient attachment guideline to be able to ensure that all patients are attached and once we have these teams built according to the patient's needs and all patients are attached to a team, then we'll be able to better measure those timelines. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I will have to think about that a bit and come up with some follow-up questions there. But for now, Mr. Speaker, what is our target emergency room wait time for each triage level, and what workforce goals do we need to meet to achieve that? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the NWT emergency departments use the Canadian triage and acuity scale which sets out target wait times for emergency departments. Those are public documents that are published online. The authority confirms that the same performance measures are used at the Hay River Health Authority. NTHSSA included an ED, emergency department, wait time indicator for Stanton and Inuvik on our public dashboard. That's on the NTHSSA website. So you'll see that where the Canadian average is and where Stanton and Inuvik sit. Inuvik sits consistently below the Canadian average where Stanton usually hovers around the Canadian standard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.
