Part of President Obama’s healthcare plan includes the making of electronic health records. The major purpose of what the trendy call “e-records” is to provide instant access of everyone’s medical history to doctors, hospitals, pharmacists and any 14-year-old hacker who might be curious.
In September 2008, after playing around with electronic health records for awhile, the province of Ontario created a new agency, not surprisingly called eHealth Ontario. This group replaced a previous organization, Smart Systems for Health Agency,that spent $647 million without showing any noticeable results. The primary goal of eHealth Ontario is to provide electronic medical records for all Ontarians by 2015. Well, here is a taste of how the new organization is doing so far.
A Freedom of Information request put in by the opposition PC Party disclosed that the new agency spent $5 million on untendered contracts. The government and its agencies are allowed to sign contracts without competing bids if the matter is “urgent”. Naturally everything in healthcare is urgent and that was eHealth Ontario’s excuse for entering into these agreements. After all, they will not reach their 2015 deadline unless everything is done on an urgent basis. But there’s more.
About $2 million of the $5 million contracts that were awarded without receiving competitive bids went to close associates of Board Chair, Dr. Alan Hudson and CEO Sarah Kramer. The group of consultants that were retained by the agency was referred to by Progressive Conservative leader Bob Runciman as an “incestuous little group”. For example a four month, $268,000 contract was given to the wife of a close associate of Dr. Hudson. And Accenture Inc., a company that Kramer gave as a reference when seeking her job was awarded three untendered contracts worth $1.3 million. Contracts were clearly awarded on the basis of who you know; not whether the expenditure of funds was in the best interests of the taxpayers of Ontario. But there’s more.
Supposedly, Miyo Yahmashita, the wife of the close associate billed $300 an hour for a total of eight hours to consult herself. It seems she did a fine job though; not only did she initially consult with herself but she even asked herself follow up questions. That type of questioning herself seems to be worth every penny of the $2400 that the taxpayers were billed for. But there’s more.
As the Toronto Star so eloquently put it, some of the consultants nickel-and-dimed the taxpayers. One consultant who was paid $2700 a day charged the taxpayers such things as $1.39 for a muffin and $5.69 for a box of teabags. It seems there was no item too small to expense even when a generous daily fee was being paid. But there’s more.
CEO Sarah Kramer was earning a salary of $380,000 a year. While only being on the job a short while (the agency has only been in existence for nine months) she was awarded a bonus of $140,000. If she accomplished anything other than handing out attractive, untendered contracts to her friends and associates who, while the gravy train lasted, never had to pay for their tea and muffins, no one is quite sure of what it is. But there’s more.
Beleaguered Ontario Health Minister, David Caplan last week ordered a third party review of eHealth Ontario’s expenditures, centering on the amounts paid for consultants. The province hired the firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an examination of the way eHealth Ontario conducted its affairs. A third party review; in other words the province of Ontario hired a consultant to determine whether too much money was being spent on consultants. If this entire matter didn’t involve wasting other peoples’ money during a deep recession where Ontario is leading the country in job losses it would be quite funny. But there’s more.
Over the weekend, in an attempt to save his own political skin Caplan got rid of Kramer. But if anyone is worried about where Sarah’s next muffin is going to come from, they needn’t be concerned. After having worked less than a year, she is receiving severance pay in the amount of $317,000.
The Liberal Party and their supporters don’t seem to see anything particularly wrong with what transpired at eHealth Ontario. According to Caplan, he didn’t get rid of Kramer because of the way she ran the agency. She had to go because the “scandal” was causing a “distraction” to eHealth Ontario’s work. And in a column in the Toronto Star, columnist Jim Coyle had the nerve to suggest that Hudson’s and Kramer’s big mistake was timing. They hired the friends and wasted money in a recession; the inference being that if the economy was strong, what they did would be acceptable.
This truly is an example of what Americans have to look forward to when Obama gets his healthcare program up and running. It is a perfect example of why these types of matters are best left to the private sector that must keep their eye on the bottom line.
