The Northwest Territories will soon be implementing 9-1-1.
Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Caroline Cochrane, and Minister of Health and Social Services, Glen Abernethy, made the announcement today that the program design has been selected.
The decision is described as an in-house Primary Public Safety Answering Point. It will co-located with the existing Health and Social Services Med-Response program.
“An in-house call centre co-located with Med-Response truly represents a ‘made in the north’ design which recognizes the NWT’s unique operating environment,” said Cochrane. “All thirty-three of our communities will benefit from this approach.”
Since May 2017, the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) has been working with key stakeholders to validate previous planning assumptions, including a final operating model.
Abernethy added that the move to 9-1-1 will help in making the NWT in a more efficient territory when answering emergencies.
“In 2015, the Northwest Territories broke new ground in Canada by combining air ambulance dispatch and clinical consultation into a single centre. By co-locating the 9-1-1 and Med-Response programs, we are able to continue making efficiencies in service delivery to both health care practitioners and the public.”
The GNWT says they will also be exploring more long-term, future integration of other emergency programming.
That includes areas such as the NWT Public Alerting System.
The NWT 9-1-1 will go live in the summer of 2019.
