Plan for healthcare change comes with promise to ‘do something’

The NWT’s newest health boss pledged to no longer take front-line workers for granted as staff cancelled their plans to keep Stanton hospital’s emergency room open this holiday weekend.

Dan Florizone – recently appointed the NWT health authority’s public administrator, one rung below the health minister – said the summer of 2025 was shaping up to be “worse than we’ve ever experienced” for staffing.

Physicians have warned the Yellowknife hospital emergency room might close if solutions are not found. Time and again, Florizone and health minister Lesa Semmler have insisted that will not happen.

But under questioning from Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan, Florizone acknowledged a major reason the emergency room’s doors are open this coming weekend is the sacrifice made by the few staff it has.

“I take your point. We have taken for granted the fact that our physicians, our staff step up,” said Florizone after Morgan described employees “making incredible sacrifices despite the system around them.”

“The reason why we have staffing this weekend in that emergency department is because of the goodwill of the emergency room doctors and the staff who have cancelled their plans, who have adjusted, and we continue to do this time and time again,” Florizone said.

“I don’t want to ever leave the impression with the public or this committee that we take that for granted. We can’t take that for granted. In fact, we’ve got to show them our goodwill to do something about it so that next summer isn’t worse than this summer.”

New plan

The comments came during a Friday afternoon briefing on the work plan Florizone will follow now he has oversight of the health authority.

A veteran health administrator, he was brought in late last year to replace a body of up to nine NWT residents known as the leadership council.

The health authority’s chief executive officer, Kim Riles, reports to Florizone. Everyone else in the authority reports to Riles.

Florizone has the task of working himself out of a job by putting in measures that turn around the territory’s healthcare crisis, then helping to install a better governance system that can take over from him.

He spent the first half of Friday’s briefing setting out how he plans to do that.

He said his priorities are:

• more access to quality care in the NWT’s small communities;
• enhancing primary care in Yellowknife and beyond;
• stabilizing the workforce and balancing the health authority’s budget; and
• improving governance while streamlining some processes.

Those priorities came with rough timelines.

Next month, the health authority expects to release an updated “people strategy” with actions to prioritize “connecting with NWT students and graduates as well as reducing barriers to health and social services employment.”

By November this year, Florizone wants to propose changes “to bring care as close to home as possible” in smaller communities.

His overarching argument is that if care improves in other communities, that’ll ease pressure on Yellowknife because less medical travel and fewer of the territorial capital’s resources will be needed.

There are plans – inspired in part by a trip to Jean Marie River’s health cabin – to roll out a “demonstration project” in the Dehcho to look at how this can be done. Precisely what that will involve is not yet clear.

By December, Florizone says he will have more to say about ways to increase health authority revenue and decrease expenditures. That is expected to include “supporting the establishment of income assessment and fee collection structures, as applicable.” No further detail was shared.

He said the health authority’s budget will show a reduction in operational expenditures, lower administrative expenses, more efficiency and “cost avoidance,” while the authority will look at opportunities to reinvest funding so access to care is improved in smaller communities.

“If we can concentrate on access outside of Yellowknife, maybe we can curb some of the demand and pressures our major hub in Yellowknife is experiencing,” Florizone said.

By the middle of 2026, he expects to have drawn up recommendations on a “future governance model” for the health authority.

What’s being done right now?

In a question-and-answer session at Friday’s briefing, MLAs repeatedly asked Florizone and Semmler what is being done to address the healthcare system’s immediate issues – not least the vacancy rate that made covering shifts at Stanton this weekend so difficult.

“Why don’t we show the public we’re focusing in on some urgent things?” Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins asked.

Frame Lake MLA Julian Morse said Florizone had set out “nice high-level goals but I was perhaps expecting to see us addressing the immediate crisis that practitioners are telling us about.”

Florizone said he had talked to physicians “about 52 improvements in 52 weeks” – the idea of finding one improvement to try each week for the next year.

The actual list of 52 things hasn’t been decided, but Florizone said he would talk to healthcare staff about identifying suggestions to try. He called those the “small pebbles in people’s shoes that get in the way of them providing care” and can be rapidly addressed.

“What we need to do is build some immediate hope,” he acknowledged.

As an example of work already under way, he said staff had spent time on Thursday assessing ways to address “violence at Stanton” based on how other jurisdictions respond to that threat.

Is there a disconnect?

Florizone’s presentation, which emphasized the concept of front-line workers and healthcare leaders working together to identify solutions, came just a couple of weeks after physicians told MLAs many frustrations remain.

“Why do we continue to hear from practitioners that they feel they’re not being listened to?” Morse asked. “And why is there still such a disconnect between what I’m hearing from administration and what I’m hearing from on-the-ground workers?”

“It’s a mystery to me,” Florizone responded, before tempering that statement.

“I don’t mean to be flippant, but I want to say that I’ve been meeting on a regular basis with the association,” he said, referring to physicians’ group the NWT Medical Association. “These matters have been raised. There’s an open opportunity to raise matters with administration present.”

He concluded: “There’s no disconnect.”

The NWT Medical Association, approached for comment, told Cabin Radio: “The Public Administrator has a lot to tackle and we recognize that. We have had helpful interactions with him and anticipate a continued productive working relationship.”

Not every MLA expressed criticisms.

Dehcho MLA Sheryl Yakeleya, for example, said she recognized that “we’re in a time of instant gratification … I know process takes time, and going through a lot of what you’re dealing with is a big undertaking.”

Florizone, late in the briefing, appealed for some breathing room to start effecting change.

“The space that I’m asking for is the space to be able to actually get some stuff done,” he told MLAs.

“It’s not that democracy and the need for public input, scrutiny and accountability aren’t important. These are fundamental to this government.

“But I also need some time to actually get some things done, and so the space I’m asking for is to give me a bit more road so I can actually go out there and do some things.”