Canada’s national eHealth project gets a generally clean bill of health from Canada’s auditor general, escaping the kind of scathing attacks on the project’s cousins in Ontario and British Columbia from watchdogs in those provinces.
But Sheila Fraser’s report to Parliament on Tuesday nevertheless found a raft of contracting and reporting problems that have become endemic to the ambitious plan to ensure everyone in Canada eventually has an electronic health record rather than a paper one.
Canada Health Infoway Inc. has already consumed $1.6 billion in federal money since 2001. Another $500 million promised by the Conservative government last January has been put on hold for more than a year while Health Canada carries out “due diligence” on whether the money will be spent wisely.
Fraser lauds the non-profit Infoway for progress made in the last eight years, including the difficult job of co-ordinating work with provinces and territories, each with their disparate medical systems.
Infoway has said it will ensure half the population has an electronic record by the end of 2010, and everyone will have one by 2016.
But Fraser pokes some holes in those promises, noting that just because an electronic record has been created does not necessarily mean it will be used.
“Infoway officials told us that having EHRs (electronic health records) ‘available’ does not necessarily mean that they are being used or that they are compatible across the country,” says her report, which cites the corporation for failure to be transparent on the issue.
Fraser also says Infoway touted its success in creating electronic health records for 17 per cent of Canadians by March this year — without also acknowledging this was 11 percentage points short of its goal.
The report finds fault with the way Infoway hands out contracts. Contracts worth $50,000 or more must be awarded only after a competition, but there are no restrictions on contract amendments.
Fraser cites the example of a $144,000 competitive contract that was amended five times, raising the total value to $726,000 — with no competition for the amended amounts.