The top health official for the territory says the department's costs, growing year over year, don't look to decrease.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information released a report last year citing the cost to deliver health care in the NWT as $17,150 per person—the highest in the nation. Canada's overall cost was $6,604.
While Bruce Cooper, deputy minister for health and social services, readily offers that the NWT leads the pack in costs, he says it's important to understand what goes into that number.
"It is a combination, the sum total of public investment as well as private," said Cooper, "so that when you parse out how much money individuals are paying out of pocket or with insurance coverage or things that qualify as a private healthcare spend, our territorial expenditure per person is around $12,694 per person."
As well, with less people to spread the costs out among – 44,291 in the NWT compared to, say, 4.14 million in Alberta – big capital projects like the new Stanton Territorial Hospital can really pack a lot onto the numbers, statistically.
This isn't to say costs aren't high and getting higher, though – especially within medical travel, one of the top drivers of health costs other than capital projects.
Cooper says the costs of medical travel, mostly in-territory but also out-of-territory, have increased by 30 per cent over the last five years.
"That goes hand in hand with increasing volumes of people," he said.
Within those costs are things like emergency medical travel in territory, travel for acute care, travel for addictions treatment or travel for children within the social services system.
A big aspect of the NWT's growing costs, both with service delivery and medical travel, is an aging population.
"We're expecting between now and 2035 to have a 92-per-cent increase in the number of people over 60 and we're already starting to see that kind of growth," said Cooper. "And it's not aging that's the problem, but it's aging healthy that's the problem."
Chronic disease conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers are high in the territory, and in many cases these rates can be attributed to lifestyle.
"The needs that people have as they age with more illness is creeping into our need for service down south and medical travel and so on," he said.
He says the picture isn't all negative, though.
"There is good news in terms of the approach that we take in planning," said Cooper.
There are close to a dozen policy frameworks and strategies for public health that have been developed recently – on issues like cancer control and addictions – and are being put into effect to try to get people fixing problem areas of their lifestyles.
He says his department has been cooperating with community and Indigenous governments to create and implement these plans.