N.L. health minister calls new details of travel nurse agency billings ‘egregious’

Health Minister Lela Evans had some strong words Tuesday about past billings by a company that provided travel nurses to the province.

“The word we used today, this morning — several, several times, it was repeated by staff and myself — is egregious,” Evans said. 

“It really was, when we see what’s being uncovered and coming out.”

The health minister spoke with reporters at Confederation Building in St. John’s, just hours after a CBC Investigates report raised questions about electric vehicle rentals billed to taxpayers by a nursing agency.

The new details were “disturbing” and “upsetting,” Evans said.

CBC Investigates obtained, through access to information, hundreds of pages of invoices and other records submitted by Canadian Health Labs (CHL) to the local health authority in 2023.

The records appear to show that CHL charged taxpayers for a travel nurse to be provided with an electric vehicle rental, while simultaneously billing for the same nurse to take taxis, rent a separate car, and fly out of the province.

And EV rental charges in the names of at least five other nurses continued after taxpayers were billed for airline tickets to depart Newfoundland.

It’s not clear whether multiple expenses like those were permitted under the agency’s contract with the health authority.

Even if they were somehow permitted, the auditor general wrote last year that health authority staff signed off on the invoices without having seen the contract — raising questions about the validity of those billings.

In a statement to CBC Investigates, CHL said: “We have completed a thorough internal review of the matters referenced and are satisfied that NLHS was billed accurately for services provided.”

Concerns about electric vehicle rentals were flagged last summer in a report by the auditor general, who found “strong indications of potential billing fraud.”

Soon after, health officials commissioned a forensic audit of all payments made to Canadian Health Labs — according to the auditor general, a total of $73.6 million over the three-year period of 2022 to 2024.

The audit is still ongoing.

“The audit has to be very thorough and we want to make sure it’s done right,” Evans told reporters.

Concerns about electric vehicle charges by travel nurse company paid out by health authority

Any public release of the audit report depends on its findings, and what happens next.

“The only thing that will keep us from actually sharing it with the public would be if there’s any legal action being taken,” the minister said.

“We have to be mindful of that. But once that’s settled, we will make sure that this is available to the public so that people can actually see how the money was misspent.”

Evans said she believes the audit will show “how bad things were managed” under the previous 10 years of Liberal government.

In a press release, the now-Opposition Liberals defended their record, saying they moved swiftly to address concerns raised by the auditor general.