Gélinas bill pushes for more accountability in health care

Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas brings her private member's bill, Bill 78, the Transparent and Accountable Health Care Act, forward for second reading in the legislature March 26.

Bill 78 puts into law the recommendations from the two committee reports. It expands the mandate of the ombudsman and the auditor general to any health organization that receives more than $1 million from the provincial government in a year.

The bill would also extend the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act, to all health-sector entities receiving more than $1 million in public funding annually. It will apply to the Local Health Integration Networks, Community Care Access Centres, boards of health, ORNGE, independent health facilities, long-term care homes, out-of-hospital premises, and professional corporations that bill OHIP.

“I spent over two years investigating the ORNGE air ambulance fiasco as a member of the Public Accounts committee and another five months investigating the diluted chemo drugs scandal in 2013 with the Social Policy committee,” Gélinas said in a press release. “In each of these cases, once the money had left the ministry and moved to a third party the oversight was gone, and things went terribly wrong.”

The bill would also expands the “Sunshine list” to all major health organizations, mandating publication of the salaries of all employees earning more than$100,000 per year. Further, it would compel the Ministry of Health to publish a statement of the amount each physician received through OHIP billings with a statement explaining that the figures do not represent a physician’s net income.

“This government continues to encourage moving services out of our public hospitals, which removes them from multiple layers of oversight,” Gélinas said.

“We need to take action to stop the next scandal before it happens. We know where things went wrong with the diluted chemo drugs and ORNGE, and we made some targeted recommendations to prevent it from happening again. If the government isn’t going to act to prevent future scandals then it is up to this legislature to show the way.”