Cutting costs, reducing waste and increasing revenues ... these seem to be hot topics for the GNWT these days. So, I thought I would give them a suggestion, free of charge, which would accomplish all three goals.

Now, it just happens that the dental office I go to keeps a running total of the number of missed appointments every month. Whenever I see the numbers I am shocked, stunned and dare I say, profoundly perplexed. How can so many people miss appointments? That one office averages between 80 and 100 missed appointments every month and that means there are over a thousand missed appointments in a year. If you extrapolate this rate to all the dental offices, doctors' offices, clinics, nursing stations and hospitals in the NWT, it means that tens or even hundreds of thousands of appointments get missed every year.

Now I am sure that there are some people out there, who will say that missing appointments is no big deal and so what if they miss a few, it doesn't cost anyone anything. Unfortunately that's not true, it costs a lot of people a lot of money.

If you are running a dental office or a medical clinic there are costs associated with that. You have to pay rent, heat and utilities. You have to pay the wages of the receptionists, the assistants, nurses and the doctors or dentists who work there. It means that every day, every week and every month you have to bring in a certain amount of money to cover all those costs.

You get money by billing those who show up for appointments. If, lets just say 10 percent of the people are no shows, then you have to bill those who do show up more to cover those costs. This means if you are paying the dentist out of your own pocket it is costing you more.

If your insurance pays, then they are being charged more and your insurance premiums are higher than they should be. If the GNWT health plan is being billed, then they get billed more to cover the no shows. I am willing to bet if someone investigated this problem and crunched the numbers, people missing appointments cost the GNWT hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars every year.

Most offices phone you up before your appointment to remind you of it. Yet despite this, missed appointments are chronic in the NWT. Not only does it make the system wasteful and inefficient, it is also inconsiderate. If you are feeling ill or have a bad tooth and try to make an appointment, there might not be an opening for days or weeks. Yet, while you wait, people are missing appointments you could have used. If they would had let the offices know they weren't coming, then people on a waiting list could have taken those appointments and had their ills taken care of earlier.

There is really a very simple method to solve this problem. If people miss an appointment without notifying the clinic ahead of time, then they get charged a fee, a fee that must be paid before they are allowed to make another appointment. You could charge them the full cost of the missed appointment but that might be considered harsh. How about $25 for the first missed appointment and $50 if they miss a second appointment in that year? Some of that money could go directly to the GNWT.

If you put a plan like this in place, then very quickly you would see the number of missed appointments drop. The GNWT health care costs would go down and people would be taught to take responsibility for their actions. These are all good things.

This is just one of many ways the GNWT could save money and the health care system could be more efficient.

- Walt Humphries is a well-known Yellowknife artist and prospector