NHS Honchos Flunk Ethics 101

A Commentary by Doug Draper

You’d think that some people in the six-figure salary range would have been able to pay their own way to those 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics games, wouldn’t you?

Former CEO Debbie Sevenpifer made it to the Vancouver Olympics

Well, apparently not.

According to a September 28 letter Dr. Kevin Smith, the recent provincially appointed supervisor of a Niagara Health System already drowning in a sea of controversy and public mistrust, sent to Andy Petrowski, a Niagara regional councillor for St. Catharines, he has “determined that two members of the NHS Senior Team did travel to the 2010 Winter Olympics, paid for by third parties.”

The letter was sent to Petrowski in response to concerns he raised to the supervisor about “rumours” that some members of an NHS responsible for managing the majority of the hospital services in this region may have taken something in the form of gifts from private parties that do business with the NHS. And to quote key passages from it, Smith went on to say that “the first individual was Ms. Debbie Sevenpifer, Chief Executive
Officer of Niagara Health System. Ms. Sevenpifer traveled to the Olympics, paid for by RICOH. RICOH does have a contract with NHS for photocopiers. This contract was in place before the Olympics. Ms. Sevenpifer is no longer an employee of the NHS.”
Dr. Smith’s letter goes on to say that “the second individual was Mr. Bala Kathiresan, the Chief Operating Officer of Niagara Health System. He, while on vacation from NHS, and his wife, traveled to the Olympics. Their travel and accommodation were paid for by Bell Canada. Bell Canada paid for several Chief Information Officers to travel to the Olympics to view new broadcast technologies and innovations that could be applied to healthcare and to other fields. Mr. Kathiresan received no other compensation. Bell
Canada does provide phone lines to the NHS and have done so always.”

Dr. Smith goes on to say that at the time of these paid-for junkets, “the travel was approved through proper channels and followed the then-policies” of the NHS. So he concludes that in his estimation, “no direct conflict of interest was found.”

Bullet News, another online media outlet in Niagara who also received a copy of Smith’s letter through Petrowski, attempted unsuccessfully to contact Sevenpifer and Kathiresan in recent days for a response to the letter, and it is not necessarily all that surprising that the two individuals did not respond. Following Sevenpifer’s departure from the NHS this past January, Niagara At Large left a message at her home, requesting an interview, and never received a call back which, again, wasn’t all that surprising.

But let’s get back to the heart of the matter. Here are two individuals – Sevenpifer, who as of 2010 provincial salary disclosures (more popularly known as “the sunshine list.” Whose salary totaled $351,000 in 2010, and Kathiresan, whose salary totaled $266,000 that same year – who could arguably afford to pay their own way to the Olympic games, even if Kathiresan had a chance, while he was there, to check out how well Bell’s communication system was wired to work at the games.

Instead, they go to the Olympics courtesy of two companies that do business with the NHS and, one would fairly safely guess, want to go on doing business with the NHS, especially since the NHS is building a $1.5-billion hospital complex in St. Catharines that is probably going to need lots of communications and photocopy equipment.

Petrowski told NAL and other media he has talked to in the past few days that one of the key concerns he has is whether the NHS can make the best decisions for the taxpayers in terms of what equipment to purchase from what company, when at least two companies that we know of are paying for items like trips to the Olympics for key NHS administrators. And it is a good point. It’s one to speak to why code of ethics and conflict of interest rules have been in place for our representatives at the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government for as long as this aging reporter can remember.

Now it is true that Sevenpifer no longer works for the NHS, and we still don’t have a complete understanding of why she was dismissed and we certainly don’t what sort of severance deal NHS’s board made with her involving our money. But Kathiresan still works their as the chief operations officer, which is a position that probably has a lot to do with signing service contracts with private companies.

Dr. Smith, in his letter to Petrowski, finished by informing the regional councillor that “since these events occurred, the Province of Ontario’s Broader Public Sector Procurement Guidelines have come into effect, further enhancing healthcare policies, including those of the NHS. Today this travel may not have been allowed as the new Code of Ethics policy discusses real or perceived conflict of interest. This policy would be applied and behaviors evaluated through this refined lens.”

I guess that is good to know, but the question I have to ask is why do you need the province coming in with new procurement and code of ethics guidelines to straighten things out? I mean a conflict of interests has been a conflict of interest going back for as long as anyone can remember and many professions, including the one I work in as a journalist, have had guidelines for quite some time now to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Just to give a quick example, when I was an environment reporter working for a daily newspaper in Niagara, we decided to join a group of people going to Germany in the late 1980s to check out some toxic waste treatment and disposal plants similar to ones a provincial Crown corporation wanted to build the Niagara community of West Lincoln. The Crown corporation, which orchestrated the tour, offered to pay my way as well but we decided to pay for it ourselves, and the reason is simple. If we came back with reports saying that some of these German waste plants seemed to be working just fine, we didn’t want those opposing the building of them in West Lincoln saying something like; ‘You only wrote that because they paid for your trip.’

I’m not using this example say: ‘oh how moralistic we were’ or something like that. This is basic stuff if you have any kind of moral compass. It is common sense. Hey, Dr. Smith, do you really need the province to come down with procurement and ethics guidelines to figure it out?

Finally, I can’t help but think that these individuals were planning their trips to the Winter Olympics while the Anzovino family in Fort Erie were working through the shock of the death of their 18-year-old daughter, Reilly during the Christmas holidays of 2009. Reilly died following a car accident in her hometown of Fort Erie, one in which she had to be transported to an emergency room further away in Welland because the closest ones in Fort Erie and Port Colborne had been shut down by the NHS as part of its “hospital improvement plan” earlier that year.

A provincial inquest in to the circumstances around Reilly’s death is scheduled to begin later this month and we will see how that works out. Chances are, the NHS will spend lots of our money on lawyers and witnesses in an effort to exonerate itself.

Meanwhile, Dr. Smith, who recently stated on a “town hall” show the Niagara-based CKTB radio station hosted recently that the concerns raised about hospital services here aren’t all that much different from concerns he’s heard elsewhere in the province, continuously states that he wants to put any further discussion of past concern and the hospital improvement plan or HIP behind, and focus on the future.

Sorry Dr. Smith, I think that is a copout and it sounds like you want to ignore the fact that you want to move ahead with the building of a house on a foundation that has cracks in it – cracks that are already coming back to haunt us all.

I am sorry once again Dr. Smith. This columnist can’t do that.

(Niagara At Large welcomes you to share your views on this post in the comment boxes below. Remember that we will only post comments by people who share their real first and last names. For those who may have further tips to provide to this columnist on possible conflicts, etc, involving the NHS, you can contact me at drapers@vaxxine.com.)