The President of the Registered Nurses Union is questioning the relative silence from the Premier’s Office following the Auditor General’s damning report on health care contracts related to the use of private agency nurses.
The AG even flagged potential fraud in outlining the expenses billed to and paid by the health authority at the time.
NLHS CEO Dr. Pat Parfrey, who says they’re conducting their own internal audit to determine next steps, indicates that the contracts in question came into effect in 2022, before the NLHS was formed. He says once NL Health Services was created, it introduced systems to ensure standardized contracts and appropriate oversight and evaluation, and address and deal with conflict of interest.
“And we’re being blamed for these agency contracts? I’m not happy about that. That conflation of NLH Services with Regional Health Authority work is not fair, or reasonable,” says Parfrey.
RNU President Yvette Coffey says she’s discouraged by the response.
“I think the most discouraging part is the lack of accountability on the leadership of NLHS. Saying that we weren’t even an entity when all this went down is very misleading.” She says “the same people are in leadership positions in NLHS. The same people who signed contracts, who requested the private agency nurses, who paid out the invoices for things that weren’t even eligible under the contracts that were signed.”
Coffey is calling for the Public Accounts Committee to hold a public inquiry into the problems flagged by the AG, and she wants to hear from Premier John Hogan on the matter.
“You know what’s really disappointing here? We haven’t heard from the premier, haven’t heard from government, except in the very beginning of this. I don’t even know what to say anymore.”
