Doctors worry about patient privacy as they speculate on government plans for eHealth

The province’s doctors are expressing ‘grave concerns’ about the government’s plans for the electronic health records agency.

Thestar.com
Oct. 13, 2016
By Robert Benzie

The province’s doctors are expressing “grave concerns” about the Liberal government’s plans for eHealth Ontario.

In the wake of Health Minister Eric Hoskins’ decision to ask Premier Kathleen Wynne’s privatization guru, Ed Clark, to appraise the monetary value of the electronic health records agency, the Ontario Medical Association is sounding the alarm over patient privacy.

“To be clear, Ontario’s physicians are very concerned about the sanctity of the information shared by their patients in the context of the physician-patient relationship,” wrote OMA president Dr. Virginia Walley in an open letter to Clark on Thursday.

“We have grave concerns about how your mandate from Minister Hoskins is being interpreted,” Walley wrote to the former TD Bank CEO, who now serves as an unpaid advisor to the premier.

“We are particularly concerned to read in media reports that the government may be seeking to monetize this data-gathering ability for profit,” she continued, as she urged “safeguards” to protect patients.

Walley, whose organization represents the province’s 42,000 doctors, also took issue with the government’s assertion that its digital health strategy is paying off dividends.

“The blunt reality is that we do not currently have a functional eHealth system that benefits patient care and it is unclear to us currently how your mandate from Minister Hoskins will help encourage or support this,” she wrote.

Her letter comes two months after doctors rejected a four-year contract negotiated by the OMA and the provincial government.

On Wednesday, Hoskins denied that requesting Clark, who recommended the sell-off of Hydro One, to assess the value of eHealth was about privatization, saying it’s “so we can understand the assets.”

“In a sense, it’s almost like taking an inventory. A tremendous amount has been accomplished through the development of our digital health strategy . . . 80 per cent of primary care providers use it in their offices,” the minister said.

“So it’s prudent to see what that inventory is to establish the value of the assets, both from an infrastructure perspective, but also, importantly, (from an) intellectual-property perspective, so we can leverage that as we go forward with a new strategy,” he said.

“Let me be clear about one thing . . . there will be no sale of eHealth or its assets or its intellectual property.”

As the Star revealed Thursday, the Liberals want Clark to deliver a valuation of eHealth ahead of what could be a critical report on the agency from Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk later this fall.

The government hopes Clark will conclude the database is worth much more than the hundreds of millions invested in it over the years.