Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will be asking questions of my favourite health Minister today, and it's with respect to wait times.
Mr. Speaker, I was looking at the health and social services dashboard on wait times. Thank you very much for having that very important piece of information. But I don't find that it actually tracks specifics when you tie months to actual wait times. It says wait times by month is not the same in the sense of tracking them in the context of getting results. So in other words, it says we have people on priority, but it doesn't actually say who we actually serve. Does the department actually do an analysis as to how many referrals it has in the context of how many we actually see? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have that level of detail.
Yes, thank you very much. I mean, the website is helpful. It's a little on the confusing side where it says referral count and then wait times, but I am not actually seeing where it transposes.
Mr. Speaker, is there any cost analysis ever done by the Department of Health and Social Services that looks into is it cheaper to bring specialists to the Northwest Territories rather than sending them to south using the medical travel process and therein lies the question. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the health authority's preference is to bring specialists to the Northwest Territories; however, all the specialists are not always available to travel to the Northwest Territories as they service Alberta residents at the same time. So within access to care, we provide them with the travel to Alberta for that care. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister's answer. Yes, there's some specialists that come here. The eye guy, I don't know what his name is, but he sees hundreds of people all at once. Excellent use of resources.
Mr. Speaker, is the Minister able to share what analysis they do on these types of appointments and strategies with me and my colleagues, including the public, because I can't find any analysis or strategy on the website on how we try to find the best way to do this business. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the years there's been many different ways to try and analyze this and right now, what this government has done is we have highlighted the medical travel piece, which also includes out-of-territory physician services, which is being analyzed right now by the health sustainability unit. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
