Friday, August 14, 2009

"eHealth Scandal" Won't Go Away

My readers will know that I have written about the "eHealth Scandal" on more than one occasion. I have done so because results of public opinion polling usually put health care issues at the top of any list regarding voter concerns. Our elected officials know this and respond accordingly, usually by spending lots more of our money on "health care".

eHealth is the Ontario government organization mandated to put all medical files in electronic form. This involves big money! According to the Ontario Ministry of Finance, website eHealth allocations for 2008-2009 fiscal year is-- $522,847,000. Wow! How many cancer treatments, how many hospital beds, and how many nurses can be paid for with half a Billion Dollars every year? As you can see, the reason I write about eHealth is because there is a lot at stake.

Read my post of August 6, 2009 as a refresher.

And my post of June 18, 2009.

And my post of June 8, 2009, where I wrote about some of the management and spending practices over at eHealth, such as:
  • "The Ontario Conservatives have alleged these untendered contracts have gone to "Liberal Friendly Firms". Oh boy!
  • "Ms. Kramer was hired last November (2008) at an annual salary of $380,000, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail through a freedom of information request. As well, documents show, in March (2009), after just 5 months on the job, Ms. Kramer was awarded a bonus of $114,000."
Now, everyone makes mistakes.  I have made many. Government is a big operation, and that mistakes occur should not be a surprise. But what has surprised me is how my old friend and colleague, Premier Dalton McGuinty, has allowed himself (according to Toronto media reports) to be dragged into this whole mess.

Shortly after these management and spending practices became public (it is now claimed that $16 million in untendered contracts were let) we saw the resignation of the CEO Sarah Kramer and Board Chairman Dr. Alan Hudson. In my opinion these resignations were more forced than voluntary.

Up until recently, Dr. Alan Hudson had been a personal favourite of Premier McGuinty. So you can imagine my surprise when I read in the Toronto Star on August 12/09 (unfortunately the Windsor Star has been missing in action on this one) the following quotes by McGuinty:


  • "Obviously, Dr. Hudson was a strong influence in all of this; I relied heavily on him," said McGuinty.
    "He made it clear to me that if he was going to take on an additional responsibility with electronic health records, he thought that Sarah Kramer would be indispensable in helping us to achieve our objectives."
    In hindsight, he added, "it's obvious that we made a mistake, but at the time the best advice that we had was that Ms. Kramer ... was performing very well, and based on that advice and the strongest recommendation, I thought it was the right thing to do, we all thought it was the right thing to do."
When McGuinty says "it was the right thing to do" he is referring to hiring Ms. Kramer as CEO on the advice of Dr. Hudson.

Records show Ms. Kramer was hired by "order in council"--a fancy term for a political appointment. This means the political opposition and others will be able to claim McGuinty had a big hand in hiring Ms. Kramer.

I know my old friend and colleague Premier McGuinty to be a stand-up guy, and will accept his share of responsibility for this whole thing without qualification. But it is now obvious he has to move this out of the political arena, and the sooner the better.

The provincial Auditor General, as I understand it, will early this fall have a report for public consumption. During my last years as MPP, representing Essex South, I served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. The provincial Auditor General works for this committee and I know first hand they love this stuff. McGuinty needs to be more proactive, and get ahead of this report. He needs to establish a panel with authority to review everything that happened, and recommend solutions for the future. If not, this whole thing will end up being just one big political fiasco.