Health minister halts funding for Canada Health Infoway, acknowledges ‘governance issues’ at the non-profit

As the fallout continues after Canada Health Infoway’s decision to shut down the $300-million PrescribeIT program, the federal government has put $50 million of annual funding for the embattled non-profit on hold.“The first thing that I would say is that the government of Canada is looking closely at every dollar we're spending,” Health Minister Marjorie Michel said in the House of Commons on Monday in response to questions from Conservative MPs. “That's why when we realized Infoway was not fully fulfilling its mandate, we ended funding.”On June 1, Infoway announced it had appointed Abhinav Kalra as interim president and CEO, a month after it had fired CEO Michael Green. Kalra had previously served as the non-profit’s executive vice-president of connected care.“The government of Canada had one person on the board of directors, and they took the necessary measures. The CEO is gone. And we have an interim director for the moment,” she continued. “And they are reviewing the mandate together and how we can do better to fix the governance issues.”In a statement to the Globe and Mail, a spokesperson for Michel’s office said the minister had not yet signed off on the contribution agreements to send those funds.Infoway has been under considerable scrutiny for the past several months after announcing in February that its e-prescribing tool PrescribeIT would be shut down on by the end of May due to low uptake, despite the federal government having put $300 million towards the program.The cancellation of the program also prompted an investigation from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, which prompted Infoway to disclose that it had spent nearly $900,000 on Green’s annual salary and $147,000 on his travel expenses, while racking up more than $418,000 in executive travel and $23 million in consulting fees. The committee also learned that Telus Health received $98 million from Infoway to design the program, but would keep 85% of the intellectual property, despite the fact that much of this work was funded by Canadian taxpayers.On top of that, the chair of the parliamentary committee sent a letter to Infoway on Tuesday after the organization failed to produce all of the financial documents showing where the taxpayer dollars went by the deadline of May 12.“I will urge your organization to produce the remaining documents without further delay,” committee chair and Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal wrote in the letter, adding that the organization may be found in contempt of Parliament should if fail to comply with the order.The Canadian Healthcare Network has reached out to Canada Health Infoway but has not received a response at time of writing. The organization also had not responded to the Globe’s questions on these most recent developments, according to the newspaper’s reporting.Meanwhile, the federal government’s Bill S-4, or the Connected Care for Canadians Act, passed in the Senate last month. The bill is designed to pave the way for health data interoperability between health software systems and Michel still believes Infoway could still play a role in the implementation of this bill, despite the governance issues.“The Canadian health system needs to be modernized and Infoway, even if it has had governance issues, will do good work,” Michel said in Parliament, citing the success of Infoway’s AI scribes program.

Health minister halts funding for Canada Health Infoway, acknowledges ‘governance issues’ at the non-profit

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