FORMER MEDICAL SUPERBOARD BOSS TESTIFIES AT INQUIRY INTO QUEUE JUMPING
Ex- CEO asked about preferential access issue
I wasn’t particularly interested in a witch hunt or delving into these issues. My view was what was important was going forward STEPHEN DUCKETT
Former medical superboard CEO Stephen Duckett testified at a public inquiry Tuesday he understood there was an “acceptance of preferential access” for prominent patients at the nowdefunct regional health authorities — but he only initiated a 2009 memo on the topic when the issue was brought to him by another senior executive.
The May 2009 memo stating “it is not uncommon” for health executives to receive requests for preferential or sped-up care for VIPs is at the heart of the public inquiry, now underway in Edmonton.
But Commissioner John Vertes heard conflicting testimony Tuesday about how the document came to be.
According to Duckett, who testified by video conference from Australia where he resides, AHS chief medical officer Dr. David Megran first raised the issue with him during a weekly one-on-one meeting shortly after he took over the top AHS post.
Megran told him at the time he’d been approached to ascertain the CEO’s view on preferential access considering the acceptance for the practice under the old health regions, Duckett testified.
According to Duckett, he told Me- gran he opposed the practice and asked him to write a clear memo outlining the position of AHS on the matter, but didn’t pursue it further.
“I wasn’t particularly interested in a witch hunt or delving into these issues. My view was what was important was going forward on the issue,” Duckett said.
“The past was the past as far as I was concerned. What I was interested in doing was ensuring the practice stopped.”
Duckett, who took over the top AHS job as the mammoth provincial health organization was strapped with debt and undergoing organizational growing pains, said “it just wouldn’t have occurred to me this practice was happening,” so he wouldn’t have initiated the memo.
But earlier Tuesday, Megran told the inquiry that he only prepared the queue-jumping document at Duckett’s request.
The memo says providing preferential care creates a “conflict-ofinterest for the organization and an ethical dilemma for the health care executive or official receiving a request to do so,” and isn’t endorsed by AHS.
It later instructs that any requests be directed only to Duckett.
Megran, an AHS executive vicepresident, said he doesn’t recall circumstances that may have spurred the request for the memo and, in fact, was not aware of any particular requests for queue-jumping in Alberta’s health system when he wrote the document.
“I had no specific knowledge, I’d never had personal experience be- ing asked, and I had not been told at that time these incidents were going on.”
The $10-million inquiry is the first public inquiry in Alberta in three decades and is looking into whether improper preferential access to health care in Alberta is occurring.
Megran said there was no sense of urgency about queue-jumping when he wrote the 2009 document, which was later sent to senior AHS staff.
He acknowledged that saying such requests were “not uncommon” was an “odd statement” to make, but said he can’t recall why the specific wording was used.
He told the inquiry that prominent people with personal connections to health executives or board members may have sought medical advice simply to help them navigate the medical system.
Megran said he may have “succumbed to the confusion” around distinguishing between requests for queue-jumping and requests for help from patients trying to navigate care.
Duckett, who said he didn’t receive any queue-jumping requests following the 2009 memo, also clarified public remarks he’d made in 2010 and 2011 about “Mr. Fix-it” and “go-to guys” the former health regions used to help politicians. He said he was told those jobs included arranging discrete health wait list adjustments, as well as other issues MLAs wanted to have dealt with “outside the normal processes.”
Duckett said he heard about those government relations jobs from various people, often in the context of criticism directed his way that he didn’t have similar roles in place at AHS.
He said he was told one “fix-it” person was Capital Health employee Brian Hlus, who he hadn’t met.
According to Duckett, among the politicians who complained that he didn’t have fix-it people on staff was Liberal Leader Raj Sherman, who was a PC MLA at the time.
A spokesman for the Liberal party said Sherman will address the matter when he testifies at the inquiry next week.
Lead counsel Michele Hollin asked both Duckett and Megran about how the Calgary Flames got fasttracked H1N1 vaccines in October, 2009 through a private arrangement rather than waiting in long public lineups.
The two witnesses testified they only learned of the incident through media reports. Duckett noted that a similar request came to AHS for the Edmonton Oilers to get faster shots, but that wasn’t allowed.
Duckett said he didn’t consider the Flames incident violated queuejumping policy, saying “it was just the wrong thing to do.”