Ont. health networks spend millions on consultants

Ontario's local health integration networks have spent $33 million on consulting services since their inception four years ago including $6 million last year alone, according to figures obtained by The Canadian Press.

Numbers compiled by the Opposition Conservatives also show administrative costs ballooned to $80 million last year from $50 million in 2006-07, the first year of the LHINs' existence.

Over the last two years, the agencies handed out $7 million in untendered contracts to consultants six of which were awarded after Premier Dalton McGuinty banned them last summer in the wake of the eHealth spending scandal, the Tories said.

The provincial agency responsible for creating electronic health records came under fire after it spent millions of dollars on untendered contracts, sparking an investigation by Ontario's auditor general and the resignation of then-health minister David Caplan.

Opposition parties have since taken aim at the province's 14 LHINs, which were created by the governing Liberals to make local health-care decisions and dispense $21.5 billion in health funding to hospitals, clinics, community care and nursing homes.

Money gobbled up by consultants and administrative costs would be better spent helping patients who are facing service cuts from cash-strapped hospitals, said Conservative critic Norm Miller.

"We see the LHINs as diverting money that should be going to frontline health services: to procedures, to doctors, to nurses," said Miller.

"Instead it's going to this new McGuinty mid-level bureaucracy."

Party researchers compiled the data on consulting and administrative costs from annual reports released last week by the LHINs. Information about the untendered contracts were obtained by the party under freedom of information laws.

Central East LHIN spent the most on consulting services, totalling $3.47 million over four years including $1.37 million last year.

A LHIN spokeswoman said the consulting budget includes money spent on programs to improve health-care services, as well as paying doctors and other professionals involved in those projects.

One such project, which accounted for $1.2 million of the $1.3 million spent last year on consultants, aims to create an electronic system that will find the appropriate services for patients who no longer need to be in hospital but are still occupying beds, said Katie Cronin-Wood.

The money was actually collected from several different LHINs involved in the project, she said.

Sometimes consultants are needed to get the job done, said Health Minister Deb Matthews.

"The issue of hiring consultants to do work is one that is sometimes the right thing to do," she said in an interview Tuesday.

"If you can get better value for money by getting someone from the outside to do a contract, to do a piece of work that's a legitimate way of doing business as long as all of the rules are followed in the procurement of that contract."

The LHINs have angered some members of the public, who say crucial decisions about health care are being made without consulting local residents or health-care providers.

Those complaints culminated in a recent report by provincial ombudsman Andre Marin, who blasted a southern Ontario LHIN for holding "illegal, secret" meetings to discuss the restructuring of hospital services and the closures of two emergency departments.

Marin found that the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant LHIN passed an "illegal" bylaw to allow itself to meet behind closed doors, which quickly spread "like hogweed" to other communities across Ontario.

McGuinty has acknowledged that the LHINs need to do a better job of consulting their communities. But his government has put off areview of the LHINs until July 2012, after next year's provincial election.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has vowed to scrap the agencies altogether if he wins the 2011 election.

But Hudak won't replace the regional agencies with anything else, which means someone in Toronto will be making local health-care decisions for people across the province, Matthews countered.

"What Tim Hudak is trying to do and we're going to see more and more of this is to discredit the LHINs," she said.

"He's on that theme and we're going to see lots of innuendo. But the question I guess I have is, how could you ever run a health-care system from Queen's Park?"

She argues the LHINs are vital for the integration of Ontario's health services, which will make each health-care dollar go further as the demand for services increases.

For example, one northern LHIN is successfully integrating two hospitals that serve communities around James Bay, including Moosonee, Attawapiskat, Moose Factory and Fort Albany, she said.

"That is work that has to be done on the ground," Matthews added. "It can't be done from Queen's Park."

Consultants aren't the only problem, according to the New Democrats.

Hospitals are also spending scarce health-care dollars on lucrative lobbying contracts to Liberal-friendly firms, said NDP health critic France Gelinas.

Mississauga's Credit Valley Hospital, which reportedly spent up to $50,000 for the lobbying services of two former McGuinty staffers, doled out a second contract worth $30,000 to the same group, said NDP health critic France Gelinas.

The hospital has a $7-million deficit, yet is spending money on lobbying the government, she said.

Matthews said she can't understand why any hospital would need to hire a lobbyist.

"What I would say to hospitals is that they should look very, very closely at this," she said.

"Any hospital CEO in this province can pick up a phone and call me, call my office. So they do not need lobbyists to get [my] attention."