Ontario's NDP Leader is asking the Liberal government to take additional steps to ensure other provincial agencies avoid the problems that have plagued eHealth.
Andrea Horwath has asked Premier Dalton McGuinty to expand audits into Ontario's health agencies to include spot checks on the use of consultants. She has also asked that the province's auditor general examine compensation for senior health care bureaucrats.
"Health care consumes $42-billion each year. We must ensure that each of those precious dollars is invested wisely to make life better for Ontario families. That's why I'm asking the Premier to act," Horwath said in a news release Friday.
Her suggestion comes days after the Progressive Conservative party asked for an independent public inquiry into the eHealth scandal and weeks after the auditor general filed a damning report on the agency.
The report concluded that about $1 billion in taxpayer funds were questionably spent on getting the initiative off the ground. The report also found that eHealth officials avoided the tendering system and instead awarded contracts to Liberal-friendly consultant firms.
eHealth is the result of a merger between the Ontario ministry of health's electronic program and the Smart Systems for Health Agency. eHealth was created with a mandate to create an online database of health records for all Ontario patients by 2015.
