Health authority managers are looking at online booking systems as one way of relieving patients’ frustration at the existing methods of securing an appointment.
To be seen by a doctor in Yellowknife, most patients must either line up and wait – potentially for several hours or longer – or call just after 8am and hope to secure one of the limited number of available slots that day.
In most cases, patients who ask to book a future appointment are simply told none are available and advised to call for an on-the-day slot or walk in and wait.
At a recent town hall meeting on healthcare, at least one patient said the frustration of having no ready access to appointments was why they ended up in the hospital’s emergency room instead.
“We hear lots of concern from the public,” acknowledged health authority chief executive officer Kimberly Riles in a call last week.
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“We hear concerns about: ‘Why can’t we book appointments online?’ Those things aren’t 100-percent within our purview to control but … we’re working with the folks who would be able to – potentially, at some point – introduce online booking options, to be able to have those available for residents.”
Riles said the health authority has heard “loud and clear” that patients in the city have “significant frustrations.”
“We’re implementing whatever internal improvements we can, within the capabilities of the systems we have,” she said.
Riles noted the health authority had used basic forms of online booking during the Covid-19 pandemic to allow Yellowknife residents to reserve vaccination and testing slots.
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(In smaller communities, residents were asked to call their health centres or follow locally published schedules during the pandemic. Doctors are often even harder to access in small NWT communities, where an appointment might need to wait until a physician visits the area or could require a trip to Yellowknife.)
During the pandemic, Riles said the Yellowknife online booking system was “pretty effective” and received good feedback from people who used it.
“We’d like to be able to have that,” she said, “and it would likely be helpful both on the staff side and, I think, on the public side as well.”
There is no timeline for that option to be introduced.
“There are some things that are not completely within the health authority’s purview. Some timeframes are uncertain on some of this work, so I’m not able to give you a projection on that,” Riles said.
