Travel chaos just “hiccups,” minister says

Since the Government of Nunavut moved its Baffin medical travel office to Pangnirtung, patients from numerous communities have suffered severe travel headaches, including botched ticket reservations, and no accommodation at their destinations, Quttiktuq MLA Levi Barnabas and Uqqummiut MLA James Arreak said last week in the legislature.

“I’ve been told that there are some patients who aren’t going home on the day that they’re supposed to because their airline tickets aren’t ready,” Arreak said.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq explained that department officials are struggling to make changes to the Baffin Regional Hospital, which lost its accreditation on Dec. 31 in a review by the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation.

“The change is to allow for the hospital here to focus on providing the service for medical arrangements between Iqaluit and Ottawa, and the Pangnirtung regional office to be providing the travel arrangements for any other community requiring travel to Iqaluit,” Aglukkaq said. “So, as it is right now, we plan to stick with the plan and to try to address the hiccups that we’re experiencing in communicating a bit of that confusion.”

“I think that we’re going to have hiccups if there is no repatriation of the position back to Iqaluit,” Arreak responded.

Arreak later asked Aglukkaq about a Nunavut Medical Travel Review conducted by KPMG Consulting. Arreak said one of the main recommendations from the report was to establish a centralized medical travel coordination centre for all of Nunavut — and he asked Aglukkaq why that recommendation was rejected.

Aglukkaq said the recommendation was rejected because she had been concerned about “the movement of jobs from Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, Pangnirtung, and Iqaluit.”

This week in the legislature, Pangnirtung MLA Peter Kilabuk also said his constituents were concerned about the quality of medical travel, and wanted to know whether his community could count on keeping the jobs, if Aglukkaq changes her mind about the transfer of the medical travel office to Pangnirtung.

“At this point in time, I don’t have plans to move those jobs back to Iqaluit,” Aglukkaq told him.

Aglukkaq promised to write all the mayors and health communities in the Baffin region to tell them about the transfer of the medical office and “the procedures to be followed for patients traveling out of the communities to Iqaluit.”