Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Nunavut sends women elsewhere for second trimester abortions

I asked for clarification as to why CIHI reports actual abortion numbers in Nunavut, while Nunavut Health does not. Here is the response I received:

"CIHI receives only Qikiqtani General Hospital data (Inpatient and Day Surgery visit information). Some of the reported numbers may be patients with a Nunavut health care card who had the procedure done in a Southern clinic or hospital.

CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) receives the data for this report from the data collected, entered and reported to CIHI. Inpatient and Day Surgery visit records are reviewed by a coder. Information is collected, coded using ICD-10-CA and CCI (diagnosis, intervention and other mandatory data fields collected) and entered into the Med2020 abstracting system. When all records are processed for the reporting month, a file is created and sent in a secure manner to CIHI. 

...

Some clients are sent to Ottawa or Toronto because they are beyond the time limit for safety here (14 weeks maximum in Iqaluit). The abortion procedures are only performed in Iqaluit."

When I asked what was meant by "Southern clinic or hospital", I received this answer.

"Some of the reported numbers may be patients with a Nunavut health care card who had the procedure done in a Southern clinic or hospital."

So Nunavut may perform abortions later than 14 weeks gestation. Very sad.

No comments:

Post a Comment