Colleges eager to cut deals with offenders

Information provided by regulatory agencies often lacks details of the fake billing

Health regulatory colleges routinely cut deals to shorten suspensions for members caught making fake billings if certain conditions are met, the Star found.

These conditions include ethics and accounting courses, remedial training and requiring the health professional to pay the college’s costs in building the discipline case.

Most professionals disciplined for false or misleading billing were allowed to continue practicing after a suspension ranging anywhere from one month to 18 months.

While most of the discipline summaries posted on the regulatory colleges’ websites contain the allegations and punishments handed out, they often lacked specific details showing how the members carried out their fake billing.

Amany Hanna’s profile on the Ontario College of Pharmacists’ website, for example, contains no information about her fake prescriptions for dead patients. The Star had to ask the college for additional documents used during Hanna’s disciplinary hearing to learn the full extent of her fraud.

Less than half of the public discipline decisions show the dollar amount of the false bills. For those that do, the amounts range from a few hundred to several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Health professions in Ontario are self-governing, like teachers and lawyers. Each profession has a regulatory college that licences, oversees and disciplines its members.

This investigation did not examine discipline decisions issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, as previous Star stories have focused on doctors. This time, the Star focused on the other 25 health regulatory colleges in Ontario.

Medical malpractice lawyer Paul Harte says that over the last decade, he believes discipline decisions have leaned too far toward emphasizing remediation at the expense of accountability.

“If there were more revocations, you’d expect fewer health-care practitioners who would be willing to risk their licence to make a few bucks,” said Harte. “It is truly a balancing act. I don’t think you can have an absolute zero tolerance rule, but . . . I think there’s certainly room for the pendulum to swing back toward accountability and general deterrence.”

Colleges say that licence revocations are reserved for the most egregious offenders and those members who have a history of discipline. Under the Regulated Health Professions Act, the legislation that governs Ontario’s health workers, a revoca- tion of five years is mandatory for certain types of sexual abuse. There is no mandatory minimum penalty a discipline panel must impose on other professional misconduct, such as the fake billing in many of the cases the Star studied.

Marshall Moleschi, registrar of the Ontario College of Pharmacists, said he is confident “we uphold our mandate to protect the public interest.”

“With respect to this particular matter the assurance to the public is not only found in the individual outcomes of disciplinary cases, but also the transparent disclosure of all disciplinary outcomes on the public register,” Moleschi said in an email.

“Any disciplinary finding becomes part of that member’s permanent profile and displayed on the public register which is accessed through the college website. Providing this information allows the public to make informed decisions regarding their health-care provider.”