MLAs spot holes in GN’s medical travel escort policy

Pangnirtung MLA Hezakiah Oshutapik says some unilingual or elder patients are being sent south for medical care without being accompanied by an escort. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Panginirtung MLA Hezakiah Oshutapik says some Nunavummiut patients who need support are being sent south for medical treatment without an escort.

And Oshutapik is concerned the territory’s policy on who gets a medical escort varies from community to community.

“Some communities follow the policy, others don’t follow it,” Oshutapik said Feb. 22 in the Nunavut legislature.

Oshutapik told the assembly that his mother cannot speak English, nor can she read syllabics, although she was recently sent to Ottawa for medical travel by herself.

“There have subsequently been other similar cases, and it isn’t always due to old age,” Oshutapik said. “We know when we’re in pain, there are individuals who don’t want to be sent alone, but are anyway.”

Oshutapik called on the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Health and Social Services to monitor the consistency of its policy, to ensure that health officials are applying the policy across the territory.

According to the GN’s policy on medical travel for escorts, escorts will be approved for the following reasons:

• following the legal consent of a parent or guardian;

• if there’s a mental or physical condition that makes you unable to travel alone;

• when a patient does not understand the language spoken in the health facility where your appointment is booked;

• if a patient is a unilingual Inuit language speaking elder 60 years or older; or

• a patient is medically incapacitated.

The GN can provide different types of medical escorts — a physician or a nurse, and another client escort who might be an adult family member.

Normally, the decision as to who escorts a patient is made by their attending health practitioner, said Health Minister Keith Peterson.

Peterson said he believes the policy is consistent, but he is aware of unilingual elders who have been sent south without escorts.

“That person should bring it to the attention with the nurse in charge, who would bring it to the attention of the executive director to the region,” he said in response to Oshutapik’s questions. “I will instruct the department to ensure that the nurses and other officials who work with that policy understand it, and it is to be applied consistently and uniformly across the territory.”

But Oshutapik’s concerns will likely be noted, as the GN’s medical travel policy is currently under review.

That’s because the current policy expires at the end of March 2012, Peterson said.

“There’s a review underway to try and improve [the policy] even more than it is,” he said, without giving more details about when how and when a new policy might be developed.

Concerns about medical travel came up more than once in the legislature’s Feb. 22 question period: Oshutapik also wanted to ensure patients can get home as soon as possible once they are released from medical care in the South.

Some patients have told their MLAs they’ve been delayed coming home because their return ticket takes time to book.

But Tununiq MLA Joe Enook said he has also heard the opposite complaint.

Some of Enook’s constituents have had problems on medical travel when their return flights are booked ahead of time – and this means, in some cases, that they must return home before they can make their all out-of-town medical appointments.

“In some cases, the patient is scheduled to return home before they have even had their appointment,” Enook said. “This does not seem like a very efficient way to organize medical travel.”

There are approximately 40,000 one-way tickets issued for medical travel in Nunavut every year, Peterson said.

“It’s unfortunate that some people have trouble due to the weather, planes going mechanical and things happen to disrupt people’s travel plans,” he said, suggesting that patients can contact his department’s client travel co-ordinators who work to arrange travel for medical patients.