Hay River Hospital will be following Yellowknife’s lead in months to come by making the entire property smoke-free, with hopefully fewer smokers to banish to the curb.

The Stanton Territorial Health Authority has set Valentine’s as the day to mandate a 100 per cent tobacco-free environment on hospital grounds. 

The plans for Hay River Health and Social Services Authority to go tobacco free are still in the works. 

“The last three months of 2011 we’ve started to put things into motion,” said HRHSSA CEO Sue Cullen. “It’s a wellness approach for sure, but also a great opportunity to partner with other organizations to go smoke free.”

The territory has one of the highest rate of tobacco use in the country—double the national average at 36 per cent.

This means that tobacco users who find themselves unwell in hospital could face added stress if they chose to forgo their smoke break, or decided to make the trip during extreme weather conditions.

In 2002 the GNWT launched the Action on Tobacco initiative to tackle the high rate of smoking in the territory, what was referred to as an acute public health concern.

The program was evaluated in 2005. Now 36 per cent of the NWT population smokes, compared to 42 per cent of citizens over the age of 17 in 1999.

“Rates of smoking are still fairly high,” said Cullen. “We need to give enough lead time to engage and educate people in a wellness approach. We will have to be armed with how we approach the situation.”

Approaching the situation would involve education, alternatives for those patients who choose to continue to smoke, and perhaps following the Stanton program’s initiative include smoking cessation and nicotine replacement therapies.

Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the Northwest Territories.

As the largest health care facility in the territory, STHA has an opportunity to make a strong statement about the dangers of tobacco use and the health risks associated with even minimal exposure to second-hand smoke. It has a responsibility to encourage a culture of healthy living.

Both territorial hospitals are following suit of health authorities, hospitals and health care facilities across Canada that have gone smoke free.

Promoting wellness, prevention and lessening the effects of second hand smoke for staff, patients and public are among the reasoning behind the move.

But both authorities also acknowledge the responsibility to those who are addicted to nicotine products and vow to offer support and help to tackle their addictions.

“We are doing a great job at treating diseases caused by tobacco, but what are we doing to prevent them,” asked Stanton Territorial Hospital CEO Kay Lewis. “The new policy sends a clear message that tobacco use has no place in an institution dedicated to healing.”

Cullen said that there are smoking cessation programs currently available and it would be ideal if people chose to access them, but the emphasis of the program is not only to get people to quit.

“We are one of the later jurisdictions to move to tobacco free,” said Cullen. “You want to make sure you’ve thought everything through. Stanton has been working on their initiative over the last 18 months and we want to springboard from the good work they have done.”

One more year.
That’s what Hay River Health and Social Services Authority (HRHSSA) CEO Al Woods was thinking as he inched ever closer to retirement. Woods, who has been in charge of health care in Hay River since taking over from former CEO Paul Rosebush on Dec. 1, 2008, will remain in Hay River until May 14 to help new CEO Sue Cullen get settled. As the end of his 18-month term as CEO neared, Woods admitted he began to fret about his decision to leave.
“You start wondering did you do the right thing?” Woods, 64, said Thursday. “Another year would have been nice … I would have enjoyed another year. Family comes first and I have to make sure I look after that side as well.”

A former CEO at the Stanton Health and Social Services Authority in Yellowknife, Woods acted as the interim CEO of HRHSSA on two occasions before assuming the role full-time a year and a half ago. In 2004, Woods acted as interim CEO for nine months following the departure of Wes Drodge. Three years later, Woods was called on again to return as interim CEO after the resignation of Paul Vieira.
“The reason that I’ve kept coming back is because of the people, and the quality of skills that people bring to the services,” he said. “I will miss that and the daily decision-making and the team meetings that we have.”
With only weeks left in his career, Woods said he will miss the people who were part of his daily life the most: members of the authority, other authority CEOs, and others within the Department of Health and Social Services.
“Everybody works very closely up here, so I will miss the interactions with them” he said. “They’re great people.”
Being the smallest community Woods has ever lived in, he admitted he’s grown to love Hay River’s happy demeanor.
“I have never been in a community that is so friendly,” he said. “People here don’t care what you do. They just care about you.”
When Woods came back in 2008, his family put plans to build their dream cottage in Manitoba on hold. After spending some time with his wife, Patty, and their children at their apartment in Calgary, Woods said he plans to keep himself busy by playing golf, doing yard work and building their new cottage.
“But come wintertime, I’ll probably become bored and look for something else to do,” he admitted. “I find retirement is not what I had envisioned. I just find you don’t get the interactions with people you do when you’re working.”
With Patty, a registered nurse, planning to continue working, Woods said traveling isn’t on the agenda – at least not yet.
“I’ll do anything. I don’t mind the thoughts of going to work at Canadian Tire or something like that,” he said with a chuckle. “As long as I have something to do, I’ll be all right.”
While admitting it was difficult to leave his mark on the Authority during his two tenures as interim CEO, Woods said his main tasks were team building and helping the Authority plan for its future this time around.
“We’ve accomplished a lot in 18 months,” he said. Woods said he is proud of the Authority’s plan to expand the current mammography program to take in women from Fort Resolution, Fort Providence, Fort Smith, as well as plans to open the Supported Living Centre’s final residence and day-program building next month.
Work is also progressing on building a new regional health centre to replace the aging H.H. Williams Hospital. The needs assessment was already complete prior to Woods’ arrival. The operational and functional plans have since been completed, as has the soil testing on both proposed sites: where the ENR base currently sits and the “Sun Dog” site across the highway from Super A. Schematic drawings will be drawn up once the decision on a location has been made.
“We have really moved that whole project forward,” Woods said, noting the facility will have a midwifery program.
“This community is going to be extremely proud of this new facility.”
The new facility could be completed as soon as 2014, and Woods said he intends to be there in person to watch the doors open.
“I’ve already let them know I want an invitation to come back up and be here for the opening,” he said.
“It’ll be great, and people here will be extremely proud of it.”

Known as the NWT HealthNet Viewer, the system is a web-based portal that will allow authorized health care professionals in the NWT “view-only” access to medical information including lab results, diagnostic imaging reports, clinical reports, patient lists and event history from health care centres across the NWT. The viewer is the first part of the interoperable Electronic Health Record (iEHR). The new system will allow health professionals to make more timely decisions as well provide better patient care.
Sandy Lee, Minister of Health and Social Services, called the viewer “an innovative tool” that will improve patient safety and allow treatment and care plans to be developed sooner.
“Today marks an important technological milestone in the delivery of health care in the Northwest Territories,” Lee said. “(The viewer) will allow doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals the ability to view electronically key information contained in a patient’s record.”
Once information is fed into the iEHR repository from one of the NWT’s four acute care facilities, it will be available to health care providers across the territory. Authorized users will require a security token, user ID, and password to access the system, and will only be able to view information relevant to their role.
Currently there are multiple information systems in each community, with limited remote access or sharing of information between the systems. With the new system, lab results will be available in the
Viewer once the results are known – compared with wait times of up to a number of weeks with current, paper-based results – while the possibility of duplicate exams will be eliminated. Initially the system will include text reports from Stanton, as well as laboratory results from Stanton, Hay River and Inuvik from June 30, 2009 onwards.
With the changes, the electronic information systems in the NWT will now be able to “speak to each other,” a HSS official explained, by reducing the number of systems involved, replacing old systems and by providing a more complete health care picture by implementing solutions that will capture and share information electronically.
“This is transforming the way we are providing care,” Michele Hancsicsak, HSS chief information officer, said at Friday’s press conference.
Health care providers asked for the system, and were actively involved in the process.
“These investments are all part of our strategy (A Foundation for Change),” Hancsicsak explained. The strategy has three goals: wellness (helping communities and individuals make healthy choices), accessibility (getting people the care that they need, when they need it), and sustainability (using resources efficiently to ensure the health care system is sustained for the future).
Currently 147 health care professionals have access to the new system, including those in Hay River, Aklavik, Fort Smith, Yellowknife and Fort Simpson, and others referred by the NWT to DynaLife Laboratory in Alberta. It will be rolled out to all NWT clinical users over the spring.
The health viewer was made possible through a partnership between Canada Health Infoway and the GNWT. Canada Health Infoway, a not-for-profi t organization that is tasked by the federal government to accelerate the development of electronic health records across Canada, invested $5.7 million in the project. The NWT HealthNet Viewer was developed using the technology found in Alberta’s Netcare Portal. It will continue to grow over time as more patient information becomes available electronically.