After investigating the Ornge Air Ambulance fiasco and the diluted chemotherapy drug scandal, Ontario's NDP health critic believes her private members bill will prevent future costly blunders.
France Gelinas introduced the Transparent and Accountable Health Care Act in the Ontario Legislature Thursday. It puts two recommendations from those investigations into practice. It would expand the mandate of the Ombudsman and Auditor General to any health organization that receives more than $1-million in provincial funding and extend the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act to those agencies. It will cover local health integration networks, community care access centres, long-term care homes and private clinics that provide services formerly offered in hospitals.
"You take the OHIP pool, for example," she says. "This is $13-billion that we have no idea where it goes."
The bill will also expand the so-called Sunshine List to agencies that receive more than $1-million in provincial health funding. Gelinas believes the measure could have prevented the Ornge Air Ambulance scandal. "The minister is on record numerous times as saying the minute she saw how much money Dr. Mazza was making, $1.4-million, that was the alarm bell for her. She did everything she could at the time," she says. "Had he been subject to the Sunshine List, we would have known all along."
Private member's bills rarely become law.
