Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Premier's sessional statement, he celebrated the new emergency room plan as being codeveloped, and yet I hear very different from the frontline. The Minister of Health and Social Services explained what went into the co-development. Was it sitting down with doctors, nurses, and other staff to figure out what it needs; like an interest-based negotiation and build a cohesive plan, or was it we listened to the presentations to the standing committee from the doctors and we implement their recommendations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Mr. Premier.
Sorry, Minister of Health and Social Services. Sorry about that. Oh, sorry. Can you repeat the question, Member from Range Lake.
Thank you. My apologies. It was in the Premier's sessional statement, but it is the responsibility of the Minister of Health and Social Services. Will she explain to the House how she codeveloped the ER plan with staff, doctors, nurses, everyone else who works to support the emergency department. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From what the information that I have on file is that this was work of the working group, the emergency room working group that initiated and recommended these changes so that we would change from four physicians working throughout the day versus the three physicians plus a general -- like, a general practitioner which would help because of the specialization of the emergency room specialty, that this will help, you know, flow of patients, and it would also, from the understanding from the working group, that this could help promote recruitment and retention in the emergency department for physicians. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. Well, I hope it does because adding a shift without the doctors to fill it seems to be a problem here.
Mr. Speaker, are all the shifts, these four -- there's four shifts in the ER now. Are all the shifts currently scheduled covered through June to August of this year? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have information up until June, and what I have until June is that the shifts are covered. So I don't have the other information. So I can get back to the Members with that information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I could get ahead of the Minister on this one. I do have some of the information until August. I recognize it's still being developed, but at least 22 days have only one doctor, and there are four days with zero doctors. So how is the Minister assessing whether or not this new program -- this new thing is actually working? Because these new shifts are not filling up. So what is she going to do to fill these shifts urgently? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to say is that with the new locum rates that are being -- we are already getting an uptake of people contacting to come to work, and so the department -- like, the OMAC, the office of medical credentialing, is working with those and working with NTHSSA as well as Hay River health authority, to look at their staffing levels within the health authority, and a lot of times staffing schedules are done in increments. And this is something that is not new and so as the -- as we get locums, you know, people apply, and then we fill up the positions. And usually, even in nursing, like, some nursing in the past would be on a six-week schedule. So there would be nothing after that six-week schedule until two weeks before when that schedule is done. That is -- there's different scheduling that has been put in place for -- and so with physicians, what we do is we go as far as we -- you know, a month or two, and then we fill them as we need because, you know, historically, the Northwest Territories has been around 50 percent physicians so we rely a lot on locum physicians, and that's not new to this territory as well. This has been happening in the whole 20 some years that I've been part of this system, and so those -- as we continue to recruit, this keeps going, we'll fill those. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Deh Cho.
