Ontario court orders end to secrecy around names of highest-paid MDs
TheStar.com – News/Queen’s Park – Ontario’s Divisional Court accepted that the names of the doctors, in conjunction with the amounts they receive in OHIP payments and their medical specialties, are not “personal information.”
June 30, 2017. By THERESA BOYLE, Health Reporter
Ontario’s Divisional Court has ordered an end to the secrecy surrounding the province’s highest-billing doctors.
A three-judge panel dismissed an application to quash an order from Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner to make the names of the highest-paid physicians public, ruling that the order was a reasonable one.
The court accepted that the names of the doctors, in conjunction with the amounts they receive in OHIP payments and their medical specialties, are not “personal information.” They are, therefore, not exempt from disclosure under the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
The Star has been trying to get physician-identified payment data from the province for more than three years. The effort started with a freedom of information request to Ontario’s Health Ministry in 2014.
The ministry refused to release the names, arguing that doing so would be an unjustified invasion of privacy. The Star successfully appealed to the privacy commissioner, but then three groups of doctors, including the Ontario Medical Association, sought a judicial review.
In an unanimous decision released late Friday afternoon, the court rejected the doctors’ argument that the Star had failed to establish a proper rationale for the disclosure.
Justice Ian Nordheimer, writing on behalf of the majority, said the argument ignores the well-established rationale that underlies access to information legislation.
“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,” the decision states.
Nordheimer said the Star did not require a reason to obtain the information. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act mandates that information is to be provided unless a privacy exception is demonstrated.
Once it is determined that the information is not personal information, there is no statutory basis to refuse to provide it, he wrote.
“The proper question to be asked in this context . . . is not ‘why do you need it?’ but rather ‘why should you not have it,’ ” the decision states.
The top 100 OHIP billers took in a combined $191 million in 2012-13, according to the limited information supplied by the ministry in response to the Star’s FOI request.
The highest biller alone claimed more than $6 million, while the second- and third-highest billers each claimed more than $4 million. Nineteen doctors received payments of more than $2 million each.
The court’s ruling is important because it will affect how the Information and Privacy Commissioner deals with another appeal by the Star, this one seeking the release of physician-identified billings for all Ontario doctors. The commissioner put that appeal on hold, pending the outcome of this case.
It is not yet known whether the doctors will appeal the latest ruling.
“I don’t know yet. I just got decision and sent it to my client,” said lawyer Joe Colangelo, who represents the OMA. “We are going to study it, digest it and make a decision early next week on what we intend to do.”
Lawyer Linda Galessiere, who represents a group known as “Affected Third Party Doctors,” said she was out of town and had not yet spoken to her clients.
Lawyer Chris Dockrill, who represents a group that describes itself as “Several Physicians Affected by the Order,” could not be reached for comment.
Other jurisdictions release this kind of data annually: New Brunswick began to do so earlier this week; the United States started in 2014; Manitoba in 1996, and British Columbia in 1971.
Ontario already makes public the names and salaries of doctors employed in the public sector — for example, at hospitals — in its annual Sunshine List of public servants earning more than $100,000.
But they represent only a small fraction of Ontario’s 29,000 physicians, most of whom work as independent contractors.
In opposing the release of the names, the three physician groups argued that John Higgins, an adjudicator with the office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, had erred in departing from previous commission orders that found such information was personal.
Higgins had concluded that physicians receive OHIP payments in relation to a business or profession. The monies do not reflect actual income, as physicians themselves argued, because doctors pay for overhead expenses out of them. OHIP payments, therefore, do not reveal personal information about the doctors.
The doctors complained that Higgins failed to justify his departure from previous commission rulings. But Nordheimer wrote that he did not view the “applicants’ criticism on this point to be a fair one.”
Not only was Higgins not bound by earlier decisions of the privacy commission, but he explained his departure from them “head on,” Nordheimer said.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/06/30/ontario-court-orders-end-to-secrecy-around-names-of-highest-paid-mds.html
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, rights
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