Senior health care official seeks doublecheck at Mayo clinic, bills province.
by Gillian Steward
CALGARY — Public trust in the people who run the public health-care system in Alberta was badly shattered when the behaviour of two high public officials came to light last week. So much so that it left many people wondering if the foxes are in charge of the hen house. This little scandal cut right to the core of public health care and revealed what little regard some of the people in high administrative positions actually have for it and the people who pay for it with their hard-earned money.
The story begins in 2006 when Michele Lahey, a vice-president of the Edmonton health region, was pronounced cancer-free after being treated in Alberta’s publicly funded cancer care facilities.
In early 2007, her boss, Sheila Weatherill, CEO of the Edmonton health region, insisted that she get checked out at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, to make sure she really was cured. Weatherill also insisted that Lahey charge the trip and the medical checkup at the esteemed private clinic to her expense account, which meant taxpayers ended up footing the bill.
It is such an insult to all the people who work in the system here for Weatherill to suggest that Lahey get checked out in the US just in case the health professionals here got it wrong. Did she not have faith in the people who are working in the trenches here?
That bill came to $7,223.00 — $5,125 for the checkup at the clinic, the rest for accommodation and meals during her two-day stay in the area.
It’s galling to think that taxpayers coughed up that much money so one of the people who runs the health-care system here could get a free checkup at the Mayo. But it’s the disregard for our own public health-care system by people who are paid handsomely to ensure that everyone can trust it that is most shocking.
How come they don’t seem to believe that cancer care in this country is comparable to the best treatment available anywhere?
I personally know two Calgary cancer patients who went to the best cancer treatment centres in the US because they wanted to see if more could be done to rid them of the disease. They both paid their own way.
One went to Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York. After she was given a complete workup, she was told that if she was being treated at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary, she was not only getting the best treatment available for her condition, she also wasn’t having to pay for it out of her own pocket.
She was advised to return home and be treated there with confidence. The other cancer patient went to the Block Centre for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Illinois. She was told essentially the same thing.
It is such an insult to all the people who work in the system here for Weatherill to suggest that Lahey get checked out in the US just in case the health professionals here got it wrong. Did she not have faith in the people who are working in the trenches here?
During the last three years I have been inside that system much more than I wanted to be because a member of my family was treated for cancer. The oncologists, radiologists and chemotherapy nurses are as dedicated and smart a group of professionals as I have ever seen.
And why didn’t Lahey have to do what all other Albertans have to do when they need treatment outside Alberta — submit a claim for reimbursement because timely or unique treatment was not available here?
That’s an easy question to answer: Lahey and Weatherill seemed to believe they were a cut above most Albertans and deserved better than what the public system had to offer, although they were happy to have ordinary people pay for it.
Lahey has since left Canada and runs a private hospital in London, England.
Last year Weatherill resigned from the board of Alberta Health Services after it was revealed that Allaudin Merali, the chief financial officer under her watch at the Edmonton health region, billed $345,000 in expenses over three years — expenses that included lavish dinners, expensive wine, and a phone for his Mercedes-Benz.
After the story about the publicly funded trip to the Mayo clinic caused a furor in the news media, Weatherill (she is no longer CEO of the health region) cut a cheque to Alberta Health Services to cover the cost of Lahey’s trip.
But that has left a lot of people wondering if she would ever have owned up if the Wildrose party — the official opposition — hadn’t uncovered the damning expense account through a Freedom of Information request.
It also leaves people wondering if there is more abuse of a public trust and public funds yet to be uncovered.
About Gillian Steward
Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald.
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