Medevacs growing in Nunavut, pushing up medical travel costs – Nunatsiaq News
Territory budgeting for an estimated 2,400 medevacs this year
The number of medical evacuations in Nunavut is growing at a rate of about eight per cent a year—and pressing the Department of Health’s budget to keep up.
Nunavut’s health minister, George Hickes, said there were roughly 1,500 medevacs in the territory in 2013-14.
“Now we’re almost a thousand medevacs more than that just five years later,” Hickes told the legislature on Tuesday, Feb. 26, during a review of the Health Department’s budget.
“We’re very conscientious of the increased costs in medical travel.”
The department is forecasting 2,400 medevacs this coming year, based on that growth. That’s compared to about 33,000 planned medical travel trips planned for the year.
Read More: https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/medevacs-growing-in-nunavut-pushing-up-medical-travel-costs/
