Everyone “happy” about GN pharma-scheme: Curley

The future of Kitnuna Pharmacy in Cambridge Bay is likely to be jeopardized if the Government of Nunavut decides to move ahead with its plan to use remote pharmacists located in Ottawa instead of locally-based retail pharmacists. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Nunavut’s health minister told the legislative health assembly March 3 that Nunavut plans to continue its relationship with independent pharmacies in Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit.

“Their services will continue,” he said.

But the health department does plan to submit a new business case for pharmacy services next fall, and it’s unclear whether the GN plans to renew its pharmacy contracts with Kitnuna in Cambridge Bay and Sakku in Rankin Inlet.

Speaking in front of the legislature’s committee of the whole, he slammed a Nunatsiaq News story — which he said he hadn’t read.

According to Government of Nunavut, documents obtained by Nunatsiaq News, the department of health and social services wants to adopt a costly plan to reorganize pharmaceutical services in the territory.

The new scheme would see all Nunavut health centre or hospital prescriptions handled remotely by pharmacists in Ottawa.

And the GN would not renew contracts now held by Inuit birthright corporations in Cambridge Bay and Rankin
Inlet.

The GN’s new plan would use “clinical pharmacists” who wouldn’t live in Nunavut but would be based at a “distant location” — Ottawa.

They would also use:

• an Iqaluit-based “territorial drug distribution supervisor;”

• three “pharmacy technicians” in Iqaluit;

• one pharmacy technician each in Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay.

All these workers would be linked “visually using tele-pharmacy equipment to communicate, support each other and check each other’s work.”

Their salaries would all be picked up by the GN.

Curley admitted the GN has a plan, but did not provide any details.

He only said the information in the Nunatsiaq News story “wasn’t meant to be accurate.”

“It wasn’t meant to be fair, nor did it ask any of the government officials… whether or not the information, the story that they were creating are actually factual or not,” he said.

Curley also said that representatives of the pharmacy proprietors, which include two birthright development corporations, were “excited, they were happy, there was no disagreements whatsover” in a meeting at which they learned about the GN plan to make their pharmacies irrelevant.

On March 4, Curley did reveal the GN is indeed looking at setting up a tele-pharmacy service, and that this should make it easier for people in communities to get their medicines in a more timely way, directly through the GN-run health centres.

“I can see it’s going to be helpful in the future,” he said.

The health department’s finance officer Debora Voth said a business case for the GN’s new plan to deliver drugs would go through the Department of Finance estimates next fall.