eHealth not for sale, government says after asking privatization czar to look at digital health system

Ontario is asking the banker who recommended privatizing Hydro One to turn his attention to the province’s digital health system, but the province tells CityNews it is not considering selling eHealth.

“There is no possibility of a sale or the commercial use of people’s health information,” the Minister of Health’s office said in a statement. “eHealth’s current mandate is set to expire in 2017, and there is now an opportunity to engage experts in the field and determine what body/bodies are best positioned to maintain and leverage digital health assets to move towards a more patient-centred health care system supported by technology and innovation.

Earlier Friday, Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced in a statement today that he had asked former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark, who headed up an advisory council that helped plan to sell a majority stake in the utility, to examine the system as the mandate of eHealth Ontario expires at the end of 2017.

Hoskins asked Clark in a letter to provide a “value assessment of Ontario’s digital health assets and all related intellectual property and infrastructure” and recommend “how to maximize the value of these assets.”

The government has been using the same language of maximizing the value of assets when talking about the partial sell-off of Hydro One, but when asked if eHealth would be privatized, a spokesman for Hoskins said “absolutely not.”

Since eHealth was established in 2008, nearly all Ontario residents have electronic health records, including e-records used by family doctors and almost all hospital-based diagnostic imaging is digital, with key lab results available through a provincial information system.

In 2009, then health minister David Caplan was forced to resign when eHealth Ontario was the focus of a major spending scandal after auditor general Jim McCarter found that hundreds of millions of dollars had been wasted due to a heavy reliance on outside consultants and poor strategic planning.

Full statement from the office of the Ontario’s Minister of Health and Long-Term Care

There is no possibility of a sale or the commercial use of people’s health information. eHealth’s current mandate is set to expire in 2017, and there is now an opportunity to engage experts in the field and determine what body/bodies are best positioned to maintain and leverage digital health assets to move towards a more patient-centred health care system supported by technology and innovation.

We’re looking to improve the health care and service that patients receive as part of a digital health strategy moving forward. Enormous energy, resources and intellectual effort have been dedicated to this agency and its work since 2008. Its successes and challenges have been well documented.

But we believe it’s also important for people to know exactly what has been created with all that effort over the past few years and what its value is. Canada Health Infoway has estimated roughly $1 billion in annual benefits to Ontario as a result of these investments and almost $6 billion in cumulative benefits since 2007. Second, there may be huge opportunities to partner and/or work with others in medical, hospital and related sectors to build upon these assets to serve people and patients even better.