N.W.T. MLA Norman Yakeleya critical of medical travel after 1st-hand experience
Yakeleya had no escort, no ticket and no one at hospital knew that he was coming
Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya is now speaking from personal experience when he says the Northwest Territories' medical travel needs an overhaul.
"I experienced it firsthand and it's shitty," says Yakeleya.
Yakeleya says he had to travel to Yellowknife for treatment last week after injuring his back, knee, and ankle in a four-metre fall.
"My son and I fell off our deck in Norman Wells," he said. "We landed pretty hard."
He and his son were checked out at the local health centre. Staff there decided to send Yakeleya to Yellowknife the next day for X-rays.
He says the nurse determined he didn't need a medical escort but that he and his family thought that was "crazy."
"I could hardly move," he said. "How am I going to get around?"
He says that when he got to the airport for the flight, there weren't plane tickets waiting for him.
"We had to find out who was paying for my ticket from medical travel. The left hand wasn't talking to the right hand."
To top it off, when he arrived at the hospital in Yellowknife, no one there knew he was coming.
"They were wondering what I was doing there and why I was there," he says. "They'd had no communication with the health centre as to my injuries. I sat there for about six hours.
"Imagine that was somebody who didn't have English as their first language."
He says medical travel in the Northwest Territories "stinks right now."
"You know, people in our small communities have to endure this," he says.
"We keep telling the minister to fix the travel policy. I've been in the legislative assembly for 12 years and still we're going through this."
The Department of Health and Social Services offered no comment.