eHealth Ontario — Liberal abuse #3
June 19, 2009 · By Charles Anthony
Hopefully, Ontarians wake up and smell a rat on this whole electronic eHealth database garbage. This is clearly just a make-work program for useless civil servants. I want to submit the most obvious evidence for my claim:
Hudson said he knew Ontario was well behind other provinces on electronic health records and felt a sense of urgency to get things done. “There was pressure from the government to get the deliveries out the door.”
The way I figure is if Ontario was behind other provinces, why not just copy what other provinces are doing?!?? Why do Ontario bureaucrats have to re-invent the wheel? This eHealth waste makes perfect sense if these “deliveries” are simply spending tax money.
Permit me to rant some more.
In the end, it was Dr. Hudson who got the fix. He resigned yesterday as chairman of eHealth Ontario – where he never collected a penny for his nine months of work – after a consulting and spending scandal went viral.
“He was eligible for a $600-a-day per diem, but he never accepted money, he never billed the government for his time,” said Kevin Smith, president and chief executive officer of St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. “That really says it all to me.”
That really says it all to me too: Alan Hudson did nothing and thus, he billed nothing for his nothing. Wow! He is probably not the only Ontarian who can fit that description. The only difference is that he is still involved in this nonsense.
I am not so quick to let Hudson get off so easy. You have to wonder why he took on the “job” if he was too busy. That is certainly not responsible. His previous experience earned him a well-respected reputation in solving these public affairs. The Ontario government needed his illustrious name at the head of their nonsense to give it street credibility. So, as far as I am concerned, Alan Hudson is a civil servant sell-out who played with matches and got burned.
I love McGuinty’s mea culpa:
“Today I want to acknowledge that our government came up short in the matter of eHealth,” Mr. McGuinty said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We should have done more to protect the public.”
Translation: we got caught, we will let you know when we have cleaned up the mess.
This is the provincial lieberals following their federal counterparts of gun registry spending.Give a pile of tax payers money to friends family and loyal lackeys to create a computer program . The same program that some honest computer nerd could do in less time for a reasonable amount of taxpayers money.
We need to demand that our government releases data freely and proactively, without relying Access to Information requests. How many scandals could the public head off if we had access to raw data like expense reports and progress reports?
I like what the US has started with their data.gov website (just hope they keep it up), and the British have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee to outdo the US. Not a peep from any Canadian government, of course.
While I agree that Ontarians and other citizens of other jurisdictions would be extremely well served by having an electronic health record, I believe that there are sufficiently competent people in the private sector who can create and generate a reasonably functional program and network to serve the need here.
I don’t propose that the data population of the program and related databases be performed by the Private Sector. That is a job for those currently serving the public in that capacity. And Data Entry isn’t a high risk job, so it can be done relatively cheaply.
There are many, many pre-existing programs and database frameworks that the government could have applied for a “copy” of that is both secure and well rounded. CPIC comes to mind pretty rapidly, as well as the existing Border Services networks, so as you so rightly point out Charles, it isn’t really necessary to re-invent the wheel here. But like any other fatcat who has the disposable income of the public purse, they certainly like to have things tailor made, one-of-a-kind. Sort of like a child comparing their toys to that of another a la “My toy is better than your toy” or “My dad could beat up your dad (or database in this case).
It’s time for us to stop trying to out-do one another and look first to the well-being of the province.
Sean, I agree – it’s my data, i should be able to do whatever I want with it.
Google Health [ttps://www.google.com/health] comes to mind when considering a private option.
This isn’t rocket science, all the government needs to do is create a VERY simple database scheme that would hold all relevant health data. An application programming interface (API) should then be made available, which would allow nearly any authorized user (or company) to access the database. Commercial services, like Google Health, could then access the data (with your permission, of course!) and then could provide any or all the health services relating to “economic health records.”
Our obsession in Canada with the idea that government is the only one who we can trust with our data and who are the only ones qualified to provide health services is seriously warped.
It’s my data, let me do with it what I want. Spending millions, if not billions, on poorly executed and designed systems isn’t the answer.
Oh, and Russ Campbell has even more outrageous information on this whole fiasco…
Can you believe that?
Sean, thank you for that tidbit. It highlights the insanity and frivolous spending of the libs.
How does one opt out of these ehealth records altogether?
Unfortunately, in our current nationalized Health Care system, we have no choice but to rely on an agency(ies) who control that information for “our own protection”.