By Steve Rennie
The Canadian Press
POPLAR HILL, Ontario — Staff at a remote First Nations nursing station arranged expensive emergency medical flights — on the federal government’s dime — to go grocery shopping in a more populated community, a newly released document alleges.
A special report by Health Canada investigators sets out troubling allegations about the conduct of staff at the Poplar Hill nursing station in northern Ontario, and about a small airline from which the Canada Revenue Agency is still trying to recover $103,689.
The RCMP has also been asked to step in.
The claims were brought to light as part of a months-long investigation by The Canadian Press into allegations of wrongdoing by service providers of the federal government’s health plan for aboriginals.
The Non-Insured Health Benefits program provides health-benefit coverage to eligible First Nations people and Inuit when they are not insured by private or provincial plans. The program also covers travel costs when aboriginals need medical treatment but cannot receive care in their home communities.
Medical transportation is supposed to be arranged ahead of time at the Poplar Hill nursing station, the Health Canada report says, but nurses can approve urgent medical transport outside of normal working hours without prior notice. They do so through documents called local purchase orders.
But the report alleges staff at the nursing station, about 350 km northwest of Thunder Bay, may have had ulterior motives for arranging some of these supposedly urgent medical flights.
“Interviews with the (Keeper River Airways) air transportation representatives in Red Lake, nurses from the nursing centre and the community health representatives indicated that the majority of these flights might have been arranged to Red Lake to provide for personal benefits,” the document says.
“In one interview, (blank) explained one of the main reasons for going to Red Lake: ‘Groceries. People go for groceries. It’s a big thing.’ ”
The auditors found that 479 of the 487 local purchase orders for urgent medical transport — representing 98.4 per cent of all the flights — were arranged through Keeper River Airways, which they say was “by far the most expensive” of the three airlines that flew from Poplar Hill to Pikangikum, a 12-minute flight away.
The auditors also found most of the trips from Poplar Hill were to Red Lake, which is more than twice as far away as Pikangikum and offers almost exactly the same medical services.
The nursing station could not explain to the auditors why it used what auditors say was the most expensive airline or why it sent patients to the more distant Red Lake instead of Pikangikum.
The auditors claim the nursing station cost the Non-Insured Health Benefits program up to $654,064 more than it should have by using Keeper River Airways and sending patients to Red Lake.
The investigation alleges signatures were forged on the local purchase orders in 84 cases.
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