NSHA, IWK defend low implementation rates of AG recommendations

HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia Health Authority is defending itself after Wednesday’s auditor-general report found it had among the lowest rates of recommendation implementation.

In 2012, the auditor-general made 45 recommendations for Capital Health, which is now part of the Nova Scotia Health Authority, to improve its patient health information systems, such as its patient databases and password systems.

However, the report found it only implemented 27 per cent of the recommendations.

Catherine Gaulton, the vice president of quality and system performance for the health authority, said the reason the rate is so low is three-fold.

First, she said many of the recommendations are ongoing work.

“Do we check usernames all the time? Absolutely. We wouldn’t have called it complete. We would call it ongoing,” Gaulton said.

Gaulton also said there are seven recommendations that the health authority has worked on that are awaiting review by the auditor-general.

Finally, she said some recommendations were implemented into Capital Health but, after the health authority amalgamation, it was decided they should be rolled out on a broader level.

“Things like passwords, policy around who has access, access to data centres, auditing of particular recommendations. Those are in fact the ones that are completed and were completed in the context of the recommendation but now we’re looking at them more widely,” she said.

Gaulton said the health authority had accepted all of the auditor-general’s recommendations a few years ago and has acted on all of them.

Despite the low implementation rate, she said she has full confidence in the health authority’s systems.

“We are actually feeling very secure in the security of the information and the things we can reasonably do to protect it are absolutely in place already.”

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The IWK had an implementation rate of 20 per cent, the lowest among all entities involved in the report.

In a statement, the IWK said, “There were recommendations we were unable to implement as those will be addressed through the planned transition to a new shared services structure between the IWK, Nova Scotia Health Authority and the provincial Internal Services Department. ”

A spokesperson said there is no timeline on when the recommendations will be implemented.