SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - NWT residents will no longer have 24-hour phone access to nurses now that the Department of Health and Social Services has shut down its NWT Health line.

Department officials said the cost of running the service, which connected residents to an NWT-licensed registered nurse, was too high to justify keeping the phone line.

"It's quite an expensive service to operate and we couldn't make a business case to continue it," said Scott Robertson, the NWT's chief nursing officer.

The department spent $572,000 last fiscal year to operate the phone line, not including administration or advertising costs.

The department announced Sept. 30 it has cancelled its contract with a private healthcare company to operate the phone line, which was run through a New Brunswick call centre and staffed with registered nurses who were licensed to practise in NWT.

But Robertson said few residents in small or isolated communities were using the service.

"The original intent of the health line was to provide increased access to our smaller communities and less than two per cent of our calls actually come from our small communities," Robertson said.

The phone line received about 21 calls a day over the 2009/2010 fiscal year, most from residents of Yellowknife, Hay River and Fort Smith. About 1,000 of that year's total 7,785 calls were related to the H1N1 virus and came in from September to November 2009.

Robertson said those numbers are proof most NWT residents continue to use health resources that are already in their communities.

He said community health nurses report they regularly receive after-hours calls from residents concerning health issues.

"What it illustrates to me, as the chief nursing officer, is the amount of confidence that NWT residents have in the quality of care provided by our nurses in our health centres because they continue to put their trust in our nurses to provide them with information and care," he said.

Doctors and nurses in all NWT hospitals and health centres still have 24-hour access to specialists if they need one.

"We are actually looking at ways to enhance that delivery of support, helping our providers in remote areas," Robertson added.

The health department is also working towards an agreement with Alberta health officials to provide NWT residents with a toll-free poison information phone line.

Next year, Robertson said, the GNWT will conduct a formal evaluation to see how the cancellation of the 24-hour health line has affected the public and health professionals across the territory.

"We will continue to evaluate the impact of this decision."

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