Transparency is key

Ontario’s highest billing doctors have lost yet another battle in their fight to keep what they receive from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan secret.

In siding with the Star over representatives for OHIP’s top 100 billing doctors, Ontario’s Divisional Court rightly held that the public’s right to know trumps physicians’ view that their billings should be private. And that’s a good thing for democracy. “The rationale is that the public is entitled to information in the possession of their governments so that the public may, among other things, hold their governments accountable,” wrote Justice Ian Nordheimer.

That important decision reinforces one made this time last year by John Higgins, an adjudicator for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. In response to a freedom of information request from the Star’s Theresa Boyle, he ruled that “the concept of transparency, and in particular, the closely related goal of accountability, requires the identification of parties who receive substantial payments from the public purse.”

The Ontario Medical Association and two other groups of doctors who had applied to have Higgins’ ruling quashed could appeal the divisional court ruling. But they shouldn’t.

It’s high time taxpayers who fund this province’s health-care budget — including more than $11 billion in doctors’ billings — had more information about where their money goes. Taxpayers in New Brunswick, Manitoba and British Columbia already have that information.

There’s a lot at stake. The top 100 OHIP billers, alone, took in a combined $191 million in 2012-13.

While the Star does not yet know who claimed what, general information released by the health ministry showed the highest biller claimed more than $6 million that year, while the secondand third-highest billers each claimed more than $4 million.

Meanwhile, an audit conducted by the provincial health ministry for the years 2014-15 only added fuel to the argument in favour of transparency when it was released at the end of 2016.

It suggested that the province’s 12 top-billing doctors are overcharging OHIP. According to documents, six allegedly charged for “services not rendered,” five of them “upcoded” (or billed for procedures that cost more than they should), and three charged for services deemed to be “medically unnecessary.”

Ontario already discloses the names and salaries of doctors employed by public organizations, such as hospitals, in its annual Sunshine List of public servants earning more than $100,000.

The OHIP billings of all other doctors should be made public too, starting with the top 100.