Posted on 08/13/2009 3:42:02 PM PDT by mdittmar
Premier Dalton McGuinty's go-to man in reducing health care waiting times has left the government - less than two months after being replaced as chair of the scandal-ridden eHealth Ontario agency.
Acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr. Alan Hudson last week resigned his full-time, $292,653-a-year job leading the province's efforts to reduce delays in treatment for cancer, cataracts, hip and knee replacements, and cardiac surgery.
Reached on vacation with his family, Hudson said in an interview that he consulted Health Minister David Caplan and others before deciding to step down last Friday after five years in the job.
"Everyone wanted me to stay on, but I am not going to stay on until I die," said the 71-year-old Order of Canada recipient. "It is time for me to do other things - play with my grandchildren, do some travelling."
The news came as Prime Minister Stephen Harper today waded into the eHealth spending imbroglio - in which consultants who were paid as much as $3,000 a day raised public ire by expensing tea and Choco Bites cookies - with a caustic rebuke of McGuinty for costly delays in creating electronic health records for Ontarians.
"The federal government had in its budget considerable funds available for the (Canada) Health Infoway, for the expansion and pushing forward of the project to make health records in this country electronic so I would obviously encourage the provincial government to get on with rectifying the problems in that area."
Harper's shot came after McGuinty criticized Ottawa's bungling of the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, the Toronto woman detained in Kenya.
Senior provincial officials countered that the federal government has not yet given Ontario the cash for electronic health records.
Hudson will not receive a golden handshake like the $317,000 given to departed eHealth chief executive Sarah Kramer - who finally broke her silence today with an acerbic statement slamming the media and health ministry bureaucrats - because he was on contract.
"There's no severance," said Terry Sullivan, chief executive of Cancer Care Ontario, where the wait times offices are headquartered and administered.
He noted Hudson was rattled by the eHealth experience, which became a major political headache for McGuinty, prompting him to clamp down on untendered contracts to consultants and the meals and treats they expense to taxpayers.
"He was distressed and troubled by the whole experience. ..... I assume that was part of his calculus," Sullivan said of Hudson, crediting him for the innovative wait times system which began tracking treatment times with an eye to improving them.
"The key thing Alan did was to say, "If you want to have change you have to be able to measure performance and make someone accountable for that performance,'." said Dr. Bob Bell, president of the University Health Network, which includes Toronto General Hospital.
A replacement for Hudson on the wait times file has not been determined, but Sullivan urged the government to do so, noting that general surgeries will eventually be added to the list.
Hudson's departure is a further blow to McGuinty's Liberals in the wake of the eHealth debacle, in which revelations of spending abuses have continued to emerge - including an estimated $25,000 spent on writing and tweaking a speech for departed eHealth boss Kramer.
She left the agency in June amid furor over untendered contracts that total at least $16 million, executive perks, and big bonuses.
Kramer's 448-word statement today appears to have been triggered by McGuinty's declaration Wednesday that it was a "mistake" to put her in the job.
She defended eHealth's hiring of highly paid consultants, saying she had to take over a "moribund and deeply troubled and dysfunctional organization." While she acknowledged the expense was "not negligible," she deemed it an "essential investment" in speeding progress to creating electronic health records.
"As with any major change, our efforts were met with strong, intractable resistance and outright hostility in some quarters, including within the Ministry of Health and a few other vested interests in the health care sector," Kramer wrote, also blaming "sensationalized media coverage."
She did not respond to requests for an interview.
Hudson defended Kramer's performance, saying she did the best she could to bring electronic health records to the masses.
"She is not a dreadful person," he told the Star. "Any efforts to smear her are very misplaced. She did an outstanding job on the wait times files. Outstanding. She created the IT (information technology) on the wait time file. It could not have been created without her. She may have had some problems on eHealth, some mistakes in trying to do the best for the Ontario public."
Not long ago, the premier was singing Hudson's praises - even as the scandal mounted prior to the Legislature's summer adjournment.
"I decided that I have every reason to continue to have confidence in Dr. Hudson and I think the results he's achieved for Ontarians speak to that," McGuinty told reporters in mid-June in Stratford, just days before Hudson was replaced at eHealth.
"He's acting in a volunteer capacity at eHealth. You couldn't get a better, more committed and more accomplished individual at any pay level."
Wow! This sure is a timely bit of news out of liberal Canada!!
Shades of things to come if (when?) ObamaCare becomes a reality...
A typical Canadian seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007, an all-time high, according to new research published Monday by independent research organization the Fraser Institute. The waiting time between referral by a GP and consultation with a specialist rose to 9.2 weeks from the 8.8 weeks recorded in 2006. The waiting time between specialist consultation and treatment — the second stage of waiting — increased to 9.1 weeks from 9.0 weeks in 2006. Patients waited longest between a GP referral and orthopedic surgery (38.1 weeks), plastic surgery (34.8 weeks) and neurosurgery (27.2 weeks). The median wait for a CT scan across Canada was 4.8 weeks. The median wait for an MRI across Canada was 10.1 weeks.
My brother will have hip replacement surgery on the 24th,no wait,they wanted him in sooner but he couldn’t,too much to do at his business.
Ping.
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