I won't repeat what I've said already for children's services and for education for first nations from kindergarten to grade 12, but perhaps there are some other things.
The Auditor General did note some deficiencies in our medical transportation reporting for non-insured health benefits. Since that time, we have in fact recognized that the data we were collecting wasn't enough, particularly in oral health and dental health stuff, but for medical transportation in general. We worked to correct that. Now, we have Treasury Board guidelines on how we're supposed to collect data and how we're supposed to report data so that the medical transportation policies are justified and validated by the data.
We also took that opportunity to look at the medical transportation data we were collecting. Realizing that it was largely manual, with all kinds of data input errors and clearly not fit for the time, and given that, out of the $2.3 billion we spend annually in non-insured health benefits, medical transportation at $800 million a year is a big one and is growing at 11%, we knew that “you know what, we need to make this automatic”. We put out an RFP, which we're currently in the process of doing, so that we can put in place a new medical transportation system that will be automatic. Folks will be able to see online in real time where their appointment and their medical transportation are, which obviously will lead to a more efficient spending of the taxpayer dollar, but much better care for the people using medical transportation to access needed health services.
We've made a lot of changes in health as well, particularly on nursing. Nursing is always under siege, especially in the 50 communities where the department delivers primary health care, nursing care. There's a nursing shortage in Canada. Almost half of those we hire are agency nurses.
That's just the stark reality, but subsequent to the Auditor General's recommendations, we have changed our workforce and who's working in these communities. It used to be registered nurses. Now, we have licensed practitioner nurses. We have nurse practitioners, and we have paramedics. Obviously, a multidisciplinary team approach makes hiring a little easier, in that there's more to choose from, but it also delivers better care. The last I checked, I think that of all our remote communities, around 76% of them, now have access to multidisciplinary care.
I could go on, but maybe I'll stop there.