Health PEI to spend $4 million on KPMG to address wait times, hospital bed flow

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Health P.E.I. has signed a new contract with KPMG, one of the “big four” consulting firms, worth close to $4 million in a bid to improve wait times for surgeries and diagnostic imaging, and to improve hospital patient flow.

The new $3.95 million contract – the second multi-million dollar contract signed between the health authority and KPMG this year – was signed on Dec. 2.

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A copy of the agreement was provided to The Guardian by Health P.E.I. The contract’s duration is seven months, with completion of the work expected in May 2025.

Last June’s 16-week contract with the consulting firm was worth $1.9 million. Upon completion of this new contract, KPMG will have earned close to $6 million from Health P.E.I. over the course of 12 months by May 2025.

The new contract appears to involve a continuation of work that was initially the focus of the first contract including a focus on the province’s patient medical homes, workforce recruitment and retention and improving the patient registry.

But during a press briefing on Dec. 13, Health P.E.I. CEO Melanie Fraser said the new contract will also include a significant focus on addressing three new areas: improving patient access and flow at hospitals, reducing surgical wait times and reducing diagnostic imaging wait times.

“These timelines are unacceptable. The wait times are unacceptable.”

— Health P.E.I. CEO Melanie Fraser

P.E.I.’s wait times for hip and knee surgery have been significantly longer than the national average.

Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), shows half of P.E.I. patients needing a hip replacement waited 231 days or longer in 2023 – 100 days longer than the national average.

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Wait times for an MRI scan have also escalated this year, with half of non-urgent patients waiting 455 days between July and September of this year.

Untendered contract

The new KPMG contract, like the first contract, did not go through a public tendering process, meaning Health P.E.I. did not publicly seek out competing bids for the work.

P.E.I. Treasury Board policy states that government contracts over $50,000 should go through a competitive bidding process “as standard practice” to ensure the best value for taxpayer dollars.

When asked about why KPMG was selected for the new multi-million-dollar contract as opposed to other large consulting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers or Deloitte, Fraser noted an exception in Treasury Board tendering rules in cases of “extreme urgency.”

“These timelines are unacceptable. The wait times are unacceptable,” Fraser told The Guardian.

“I think different things have been tried here before. But we do need to do things differently. And we do need to move with some urgency to make the changes necessary.”

Fraser said the tendering process can take up to six months.

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The health authority hopes to reduce hip and knee surgical wait times for 65 per cent of P.E.I. patients to six months by 2027 and to decrease average wait times for diagnostic imaging by 25 per cent in the same time.

Health P.E.I. says the first phase of KPMG’s work established a transformation office that helped improve physician recruitment practices and the patient registry. Fraser also said the transformation office has helped establish plans for scaling up patient medical homes. The health authority hopes these homes remove up to 50,000 patients from the patient registry by 2027.

Private MRI clinic

Fraser said Health P.E.I.’s efforts to lower MRI wait times likely will involve private MRI clinics on P.E.I.

“We do know that there are private companies that are looking to set up MRIs,” Fraser told reporters on Dec. 13.

Fraser said Health P.E.I. does hope to invest further in diagnostic imaging capacity at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and has also been working with a private MRI clinic in Moncton, N.B.

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She also said UPEI’s Atlantic Veterinary College has been fundraising for an initiative that could involve scans of both humans and animals using their own MRI equipment.

“That being said, very similar to, I think, the work that we did with the cataract clinic, this is a new partnership. We have structured the arrangement that they don’t take staff from our hospitals, they don’t take staff from our health system,” Fraser said of the potential new MRI clinic.

Fraser said private providers have not yet established a local MRI clinic. A partnership would involve a transparent process, she said.

Stu Neatby is a political reporter for The Guardian in Prince Edward Island. He can be reached at sneatby@postmedia.com and followed on X @stu_neatby.

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