Amazing Goings On in e-Health in Ontario in Canada!

The Toronto Star and Canadian Press have been having an absolute field day over an apparent corruption scandal affecting the CEO and senior staff of the organisation tasked with delivering e-Health to the Canada’s largest province. (Population 13.5 million)

For details go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario

Representative of the coverage has been the following:

Liberals change tune on eHealth bonus

After minister defends $114,000 payment to CEO, new information now leaves him 'very concerned'

June 06, 2009

Tanya Talaga - QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

The fate of embattled eHealth Ontario CEO Sarah Kramer is unclear after new revelations about her six-figure bonus were heaped atop days of controversy over rich consultancy fees, executive perks and untendered contracts.

While Health Minister David Caplan has steadfastly defended the $380,000 a year executive at the centre of the eHealth spending scandal, the government's tune changed abruptly yesterday.

More questions arose concerning the $114,000 bonus paid out to Kramer after five months' work. Initially, Caplan portrayed the bonus as something Kramer was entitled to at her previous job at Cancer Care Ontario, plus, compensation for her work at eHealth.

But the bonus is three times more than what Kramer would have received in her former job, a Cancer Care executive says. "The minister is very concerned about some of the information that has surfaced regarding eHealth," Caplan's press secretary Steve Erwin said. "I think it's safe to say his concern has grown over the last day, and he's looking for some further information from the agency about what has transpired. He's looking for some further information from eHealth directly."

Erwin said the ministry "can't speculate" when they will get that information. The eHealth board has the "flexibility" to decide on appropriate bonuses, Erwin said.

Kramer could not be reached for comment yesterday.

EHealth was established in 2008 to develop electronic health records for all Ontarians by 2015.

.....

The provincial auditor general and PricewaterhouseCoopers are reviewing the agency.

This week the Star reported:

• eHealth Ontario paid a consultant who submitted an invoice for eight hours of work in which she said she consulted herself, then followed up with questions for herself. Agency spokeswoman Deanna Allen said the bill contained a typo and that the consultant had consulted and followed up with a colleague, but acknowledged the invoice had been paid as filed.
• At least $2 million in untendered contracts were awarded by eHealth to long-time associates of agency chair Dr. Alan Hudson and CEO Kramer, according to Progressive Conservative MPPs. Allen said the eHealth board, not Hudson, awarded contracts before Kramer's arrival.
• An eHealth consultant billed for tea and a dessert square while earning $2,700 a day.
• Another consultant being paid $2,750 a day collected $75 a day for expenses. He has flown home to Edmonton 31 times in five months at a cost of nearly $21,000.

More here:

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/646631

Further headlines provide for amazing reading – and provide a flavour of what has been going on.

Liberals Change Tune On Bonus

Consultant Paid For Consulting Herself

$2m Went To Associates

Consultant Billed $1.65 For Tea

Nickel-And-Diming Taxpayers

The Ehealth Imbroglio: Editorial

Mud Doesn't Stick To Premier

Clearly the Star would seem to have found a really juicy scandal and a good deal of it must be true or I am sure it would have been pulled from the web ages ago!

It is worth noting that e-Health Ontario was founded in 2008 after an earlier organisation, which had been founded in 2002, largely failed to deliver and was essentially scrubbed. It was called the Smart Services for Health Agency and is referred to here:

http://emrcanada.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/the-dark-side-of-e-health-in-canada/

In late breaking news from the 8^th June we hear the CEO has now resigned.

See here for the gory details:

http://www.thestar.com/Article/647115

The scandal has also attracted national attention. See also these fun articles from the national Globe and Mail:

• Scandal grows at eHealth Ontario
• Critics fume over eHealth Ontario scandal
• Head of eHealth Ontario steps down amid contract scandal

The only relevance of all this seems to me to be around the way we are keeping track of NEHTA’s performance, in other that a purely financial sense, given it also spends a large amount of public money on consultants.

In the most recent annual report NEHTA spent $15.9M on staff and $13.4M on contractors and consultants.

The bill for consultants in 2007/8 (the latest year available) was $2,293,259.

The Auditor (Grant Thornton) makes it totally clear, as would be expected, that theirs is only a financial and not a performance audit.

Nowhere is there provided a listing of consultancies and the projects that were worked on. It seems to be a lot of money to be spent with no review of the value, projects and outcomes.

Be clear I am not saying NEHTA is anything like the team in Ontario but a little openness would not hurt! Having any sense of impunity when funded by the public can be very dangerous indeed in my experience.

Overall just an amazing saga of apparent pubic mismanagement!

David.