ORNGE paid $436,000 to top doctor to advise Chris Mazza
University of Toronto
Tom Stewart MD OTTAWA 1988 FRCPC (Int.Med) received $436,000 from ORNGE, and the company would like to know what he did to earn it.
The additional payments to Dr. Tom Stewart — who earns about $607,000 in annual salary and benefits as Mt. Sinai’s physician-in-chief — were not disclosed on the provincial sunshine list that tracks how public dollars are spent.
Stewart’s $75,000-per-year consulting contract at ORNGE is similar to a contract of up to $400,000 annually that Mazza himself had. In both cases, the new managers of ORNGE are now struggling to determine what work was done to justify the payments. The monies paid to both men were public funds.
“Most interactions Dr. Stewart had with ORNGE were directly with Dr. Mazza. As a result, we are unable to confirm the work performed,” ORNGE spokesman James MacDonald said.
In a response to questions from the Star, Stewart said he delivered value for the money as Mazza frequently contacted him with questions. “I saw evidence of my counsel play out in several areas, for example, research development, clinician recruitment and improved critical-care system integration,” Stewart said.
The Mt. Sinai doctor, when asked, told the Star he also provided advice to Mazza on how to potentially sell the ORNGE air ambulance model to United Arab Emirates clients, a Mazza plan that went nowhere.
The consulting contract between ORNGE and Stewart ended in January 2012 after the former chairman of ORNGE alerted the provincial health ministry to his concern that Stewart and Mazza were both being paid for work they did not do. Chairman Rainer Beltzner’s Dec. 23, 2011 letter to the province raising these concerns was made a public exhibit at the Queen’s Park committee investigating ORNGE.
Stewart would not grant the Star an interview but, using Mt. Sinai public relations official Sally Szuster as an intermediary, he provided responses to questions over the past four days. At Mt. Sinai, Stewart is physician-in-chief and chief clinical officer.
Mazza and Stewart first met each other, Stewart says, during the SARS outbreak in 2003. Stewart said he, Mazza and others “led the effort against the SARS outbreak.”
They became social friends, Stewart said. When Mazza created ORNGE in 2005, he asked Stewart to provide ongoing advice. Stewart said he was “clinical care adviser for ORNGE.” He has a contract with ORNGE, but said he could not disclose it at the present time. ORNGE says it will release the contract but requires Stewart’s permission.
Stewart said his annual “stipend” from ORNGE was $75,000. ORNGE’s MacDonald said they have found payments totalling $436,000 to Stewart.
Friday, provincial health minister Deb Matthews released Mazza’s expense records, revealing that the ORNGE boss had a lavish lifestyle, jetting around the world, staying at fine hotels from Rio de Janeiro to Paris to Milan. Conservative critic, MPP Frank Klees, dubbed him “First Class Chris.”
Included in those records are several meals (modest compared to others in the box of documents) with Stewart and also several parking receipts filed when Mazza visited Stewart at Mt. Sinai. In February 2006 he filed for a $62 dinner with Stewart at Café Nervosa in Yorkville, and in July 2007 a $272 dinner at Blowfish restaurant on King St. West.
In his email responses, Stewart said his knowledge of critical care issues at hospitals helped Mazza structure ORNGE. In explaining what he advised Mazza on for $75,000 a year, Stewart said he performed: “The review of clinical care policies and procedures, recruitment of physicians and researchers who specialize in specific areas of critical care and transport, advising on how patient transport services can optimize patient flow.”
Stewart acknowledged that his initial contacts were primarily with Mazza. “I was contacted most frequently by Dr. Mazza who would often refer me to other members of the ORNGE staff.”
At no time, Stewart said, did he hear any rumblings that “the terms of my engagement were not being met.”
At ORNGE Sunday, officials told a different story.
ORNGE spokesman MacDonald said that “objections were raised regarding this contract within ORNGE, but Dr. Mazza gave direction that it remain in effect.” The contract was renewed “automatically,” MacDonald said.
At the public hearings into ORNGE last August, former chair Rainer Beltzner said that in late December 2011 (three weeks after the Star broke the first part of the ORNGE story) he learned that Mazza had an annual contract as medical director and it was unclear what, if anything, Mazza did to earn up to $400,000 a year for the job. Just that portion of Mazza’s salary over the years totalled $2.2 million.
Beltzner wrote a letter Dec. 23, 2011 to a top provincial health official, raising the issue of both Mazza’s and Stewart’s payments.
“On another matter brought to my attention yesterday … it appears that the company, through Dr. Mazza’s authorization and insistence, was paying a Dr. Tom Stewart at Mount Sinai Hospital for services that do not appear to have been needed or delivered. This relationship has been going on for some time apparently, and there is a need to examine the underlying motive and authorization for these payments and the acceptance of these monies by Dr. Stewart.”
It is unclear who ended the contract, ORNGE or Stewart. ORNGE said the contract was “terminated.” Stewart said he resigned in January, 2012. By that point, Mazza had left ORNGE, first on sick leave then permanently. The for-profit ORNGE company he was employed by was put into bankruptcy.
As to his annual ORNGE payments not being part of the Sunshine List, Stewart said he was “not aware of how ORNGE reported its salaries.”
The Sunshine List records public officials paid more than $100,000 in public monies, but it is not clear how an individual is dealt with if they receive funds from more than one public source
