October 07, 2009

eHealth Ontario moves to restore public’s trust

eHealth Ontario today pledged that the agency will regain the public’s trust by delivering concrete results and ensuring that the issues of procurement and governance reported by the Auditor General will not be repeated.

“In the agency’s eagerness to demonstrate results quickly, the organization fell short in meeting its obligations,” said Rob Devitt, Interim CEO. “We understand that public expectations have not been met and apologize to taxpayers for this failing.”

While the Auditor General’s report highlights past practices of eHealth Ontario, it also acknowledges some of the very important steps that the agency has taken to strengthen governance and accountability, including:

• Implementing rigorous procurement rules;
• Strengthening oversight;
• Ensuring appropriate controls are in place;
• Enhancing business planning; and
• Ensuring mechanisms are in place to better assess deliverables

“I have been impressed by the commitment and dedication demonstrated by the board and staff of eHealth Ontario to get the house in order,” said Mr. Devitt. “Restoring public trust will not be easy. But we seek to regain public trust one step at a time, not by what we say, but by what we do and how we do it.”

Changes made at eHealth Ontario since June 2009

• Notice was issued to all eHealth Ontario staff and vendors regarding the need to eliminate unnecessary expenditures;
• Finance division began applying an additional level of scrutiny to all payments and strengthened budgeting processes and financial management practices;
• In addition to following the government’s new procurement directive, eHealth Ontario has enhanced its procurement function;
• Planned or pending procurements are scrutinized to ensure they are in compliance with procurement rules before they are executed;
• Board approved new procurement directive as well as a new delegation of authority policy;
• The agency is in compliance with the Government of Ontario’s “Travel, Expenses & Hospitality Directive”; and
• All staff will be required to attend training and information sessions related to the new policies.

Accomplishments

• Developed and published the province’s first ehealth strategy (2009 – 2012) with extensive input from stakeholders, delivery partners and staff;
• Issued a request for qualifications to identify companies that are qualified to bid on the contract to develop the diabetes registry;
• Enabled the integration of Ontario’s Diagnostic Imaging and Picture Archiving Communication Systems (DI/PACS) which established common repositories for sharing information across the health care system;
• Used innovative electronic medication prescribing to prevent adverse drug interactions in Sault Ste. Marie and the Georgian Bay area;
• Enabled neurosurgeons to remotely review head trauma images to make critical decisions about emergency patients — saving lives, lessening family distress and avoiding costly transfers;
• By mining data, eHealth Ontario has identified the diabetes care gap; and
• Significant progress has been made towards the development of province-wide client and provider registry identity systems that will serve as a key part of ensuring security of the ehealth system.

For further information please contact:

Heather Brown
Communications Advisor,
eHealth Ontario
heather.brown@ehealthontario.on.ca

Backgrounder

About eHealth Ontario

• eHealth Ontario was created on September 29, 2008 as a result of a merger between Smart Systems for Health Agency and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s e-Health Program.
• The agency’s mandate is to play the leading role in harnessing technology and innovation to improve patient care, safety, and access in support of the government’s ehealth agenda.
• The provincial government has committed approximately $2 billion over the next three years to ehealth initiatives. 
• eHealth Ontario has eight office locations across the GTA.
• The agency currently has a total workforce of 944 positions of which 607 are full-time employees.
• As of September 30, 2009 eHealth Ontario had 286 consultants (234 of which were from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s e-Health program) In the next two months the agency will bring the total consultant base down to 234 consultants, all of which will have been competitively tendered. By the end of the fiscal year, March 31, 2010 the total consultant number will be 160.
• Since June 1, 2009, 128 underutilized circuits have been closed on the network, realizing an annual savings of about $770,000.

Network – Value for money

There has been criticism that money has been spent on ehealth initiatives, such as network infrastructure, with nothing to show for it. This backgrounder illustrates the health care systems that have been using our network, originally created by SSHA, since 2003.

Year	Initiative	Usage details
2003	Integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS)	Accessed by 36 Public Health Units and MOHLTC
2004	Ontario Public Health Portal	Accessed by Public Health workers province-wide
2005	Drug Profile Viewer (DPV)	200+ Ontario hospitals with over 6500 registered users
2006	Important Health Notice Publication Facility	Electronic distribution of important health information
2006	Ontario Telemedicine Network	345 sites, 22,000 clinical encounters
2006	LHIN shared services organization	14 LHINS (electronic mail service, financial application hosting)
2006	Electronic Children’s Health Network (eCHN)	100 hospitals, six tertiary care centres, 14 CCACs and 20 child treatment centres
2006	Multi site EMR system access	Physicians share EMR info and connect remotely
2006	OntarioMD Portal	Used by registered physicians
2006	Ontario Wait Times Information System and Enterprise Master Patient Index	800+ surgeons on the eHealth Ontario network
2007	Ontario Case Costing Initiative	Used 45+ hospitals across the province
2007	Electronic Medical Record Application Service Provider	Physicians access EMRs on Application Service Provider service
2007	MOHLTC Health Network System (HNS)	3100+ Ontario pharmacies 6,000+ claims submitted daily
2008	MOHLTC eReferral	Used by two hospitals and six CCACs
2008	Resource Matching & eReferral (RM&R)	Provincial rollout commencing
2008	Diagnostic Imaging Archival and Retrieval	99 hospital sites across four LHINs
2008	Community Care Access Centre	42 CCAC & LT Care facilities access three shared apps
2008	Oral Health Information Support System	Accessed by 500+ program dental professionals
2008	Hospital diagnostic imaging repository service (HDIRS)	39 hospital sites across three LHINs
2008	Integrated birth registration	Ontario hospital user registration / authentication
2008	Ontario Lab Information System	In seven hospitals and large community labs. Contains greater than 50 per cent of Ontario’s lab test results
2009	Patient Results Online Central LHIN	Pilot in Central LHIN
2009	Enterprise Neurological Image Transfer System (ENITS)	56 of 93 sites (60 per cent) rolled out

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