Mr. Speaker, our primary healthcare system has the potential to get better over time. We have access to newer technologies, including around virtual care, more programs than ever to recruit and train local practitioners, and a team working to improve Indigenous patient experiences. So how is it possible that people's access to primary care in so many of our communities has gotten worse over the past five years?
I am tired of the explanation that health care across Canada is struggling and that we're somehow powerless to stop this decline. Not long ago, if you called for a primary care appointment in Yellowknife, you had a chance of someone answering the phone. You had a chance of getting an appointment rather than being told the schedule is full and to call back in two weeks when the next round of locums' schedules opened up. You didn't have to line up outside at 7 a.m. in the cold with your crutches or your sick children competing with all the other sick people as if you were in some kind of reality TV survival show.
Remember in 2019 when expanded same-day access was launched, and you could go to a walk-in clinic during mornings and evenings? What happened to that? If you go to the Stanton emergency room now, you used to be able to get lab results while you were there. Now, lab samples are being sent down to Alberta, creating the need to book a follow-up primary care visit, which is nearly impossible in a system with a three-month waiting list and no ability for patients to check their own lab results online.
If you live in a small community, you at least have a better chance of someone answering the health centre phone, but community health nurses struggle with little support. Five years ago, there were pilot projects in Behchoko and Fort Good Hope building on successes in the Beaufort Delta where the community health nurses had a designated physician on call to support them seven days a week so they could get advice before someone's health problem got worse and became an emergency. These pilot projects received little support and lost traction.
Despite available technologies, most community health nurses still don't have videoconference ability when they're receiving real-time support from emergency physicians, so they're apparently expected to be holding a phone under their arm or something while treating someone in an emergency. Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent for the last sentence of my statement. Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
Mr. Speaker, we have done better, and we so obviously can do better in giving people across this territory the most basic access to care in all our communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member from the Deh Cho.
