Health minister dismisses eHealth board, orders full review

Big changes are coming to eHealth, just days after a privacy commissioner’s report heavily criticized the agency’s handling of one of Saskatchewan’s largest privacy breaches ever.

Health Minister Paul Merriman has announced the previous board of eHealth, which manages electronic records and leads information technology for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, has been dismissed.

In its place will be two Ministry of Health staff members: Associate Deputy Minister Denise Macza, who will serve as chair, and Assistant Deputy Minister Billie-Jo Morrissette, who will be vice-chair.

Merriman stressed to reporters Tuesday the move was done to improve and increase his ability to oversee eHealth’s operations and not a condemnation of the previous board.

“I need to have this in close to me. This is a huge breach that we have seen with eHealth, and I need to provide direct oversight into that and it’s very much closer if it’s done by the associate deputy ministers,” said Merriman.

The new board will be a temporary measure but Merriman couldn’t say how long it would last. He said the board might end up doing some fine-tuning and make a few changes but he didn’t see this as a redoing of everything eHealth does.

The previous board included seven individuals with a broad base of experience in the financial, medical, strategic marketing, education, legal, and insurance fields. Merriman expressed his confidence in the new two-person iteration, however.

“I am confident that the new Board appointments as an interim measure will provide closer oversight of eHealth by the Ministry of Health during the governance review,” he said in a media release.

Privacy commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski’s office made 25 recommendations for the ministry, SHA, and eHealth to address the many shortcomings that led to a ransomware attack that lasted for more than two weeks and resulted in the potential breach of more than 574,000 files containing personal information. Merriman has committed to providing a response to all of them within 30 days.

The new board will make its highest priority one of the biggest recommendations: An independent review of the governance, management, and program operations at eHealth.

“Some of them we have done already, some of them we need to do and it’s a little bit more of a deeper dive into the operations at eHealth,” he said.

With the potential budgetary impact of those 25 recommendations requiring an additional investment of tens of millions of dollars, Merriman admits it could be an expensive proposition.

“I’ve got to have a look at the budgetary process,” he insisted. “This gets put in with all of our other budgetary requests, and obviously we have got a huge budgetary pressure of COVID, what’s happening with our surgical side of things. There’s a whole bunch of factors that are in play for next year.”

Merriman feels this change shows decisive action meant to give confidence to the public in what eHealth does for them.

“The responsibility lies with me in this, and this is, I think, the best path right now in the short term to be able to get eHealth where we need it to be but also to restore that confidence in the people of Saskatchewan that this is important,” said Merriman.

“I need to be able to look people in the eye and say, ‘I did what I could to make sure your privacy is protected.’ “