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New legislation cuts red tape for patients in N.W.T. hospitals

The N.W.T. health minister says new legislation has made it easier for family members and close friends to find out the condition of a patient in hospital, after the issue was raised in the Legislative Assembly this week.

Jane Groenewegen, MLA for Hay River South, said she was recently contacted by a constituent who was nearing the end of her life. When the woman's son called the hospital asking for information about her condition, the hospital refused, saying he wasn't on a list of approved contacts.

Groenewegen said she wasn't aware such a list existed.

"If people are required to have a list of approved contacts when they are a patient in the hospital, it is very important for them to know that," Groenewegen said.

"The family could be in great strife or stress."

But Health Minister Glen Abernethy says that policy has changed since the territory's new Health Information Act came into effect Oct. 1.

Abernethy says under the old legislation, healthcare workers couldn't even tell family members if a person was in the hospital. Now, staff are screening callers and sharing some information with them.

"We're reducing some of that bureaucratic red tape and requirements to make it a little bit easier," Abernethy said.

Patients will no longer have to give the hospital a list of approved contacts.

"It's quite a change. The professionals are going to have to use some discretion," Abernethy said.

"But we have been out training the individuals across the system, and we have a manual that's available, a plain language guide, which has been distributed to health centres across the Northwest Territories."

Abernethy says patients can still request that their information not be shared, saying the right to privacy is still an "absolute must."