BR NS Auditor General – CP

Source: The Canadian Press – Broadcast wire
Apr 27, 2016 

HALIFAX – The sluggish pace of an upgrade to Nova Scotia’s prescription monitoring system drawn a rebuke from the province’s auditor general.

Michael Pickup pointed to a recent criminal case — where a doctor is alleged to have prescribed 50-thousand pills to a patient _ as one sign the province should follow up on safety recommendations quickly.

Pickup made that point while releasing a study that shows only 60 per cent of about 400 auditor recommendations made in 2012 and 2013 are complete.

Those included a failure by the education department to set up outcomes standards for home schools and the failure to bring in the prescription monitoring system in a timely way.

Health Minister Leo Glavine says the plan to bring in a monitoring system didn’t occur as quickly as originally hoped.

However, he’s promising that by June the auditor’s original recommendations will all be completed.

Glavine says it took more time than expected to create a system that would monitor and flag problems in real time across the province.

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(The Canadian Press)

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