Health industry leaders and observers on both sides of the border agree there are lessons to be learned from the eHealth Ontario debacle, which has at its center a newly organized agency mired in controversy this month over contract approvals and expense accounts. The chair of the organization's board resigned last week, just days after the CEO was forced out. According to a feature report on iHealthBeat.org, Chair Alan Hudson and CEO Sarah Kramer came under fire for the way they handed out about $5 million Canadian in health IT contracts, and for hiring consultants who earned about $2,400 a day and still billed taxpayers for snacks.
The scandal surfaces just as the free spending Obama administration and the Congress gear up for a national health IT expansion fueled by more than $19 billion in stimulus funding. While industry watchers have been quick to offer excuses for the eHealth Ontario implosion--"these kinds of problems are international in scope;" "this is the result of private business practices carried hastily into the public realm;" "eHealth Ontario had a good team in the beginning, but the rest of the team was too hastily assembled"--the matter currently remains under investigation until an official report is issued in September.
Meanwhile, Dave Garets, president and CEO of HIMSS Analytics and executive vice president of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, has said U.S. industry and government officials would be wise to heed lessons from the north before embarking on a long, expensive campaign to spread health IT.
"There needs to be rigor in how applications are made for the money, and there needs to be careful due diligence to make sure the health care organizations that receive it are deserving and that all accounting and procedural steps are followed," Garets told iHealthBeat.org. He added: "This is going to be a big, widespread operation with lots of moving parts."
HealthcareGoesMobile.com wants to know what lessons your organization will take from the eHealth Ontario debacle? Allowing for the inherent differences between the two countries' healthcare systems, do you feel the current push toward health reform contains adequate safeguards to shield American taxpayers from similar health IT related scandals? Should the health reform movement name a Fraud, Corruption and Incompetence Czar?
John Farrell participates in HealthcareGoesMobile.com as a community correspondent through Intel’s paid sponsorship with MedTech Publishing Company.
