Health Law - ONSCDC

The applicant physician sought judicial review of a decision by the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board, which declined to review the College's decision to take no action on his complaint against the College's registrar.

The applicant's complaint alleged professional misconduct regarding the College's policies on COVID-19 vaccines.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding that the Board reasonably concluded the complaint was vexatious, an abuse of process, and a collateral attack on College policy.

The court also found no breach of procedural fairness or reasonable apprehension of bias.

The applicant physician sought judicial review of a Board decision requiring her to reimburse OHIP over $600,000 for COVID-19 vaccinations administered at mass clinics.

The Board found the applicant failed to meet strict billing requirements for delegated services because the medical students and other physicians who administered the vaccines were not her 'employees'.

The Divisional Court upheld the Board's interpretation of the delegation requirements as reasonable.

However, the Court found the Board's refusal to grant relief under the 'extenuating circumstances' provision of the Health Insurance Act was unreasonable, given the context of the global pandemic and the applicant's good faith efforts to facilitate mass vaccinations.

The matter was remitted to the Board to determine the appropriate reimbursement amount.

The appellant pharmacist appealed a Discipline Committee decision finding him guilty of sexually abusing a patient who was also his coworker.

The appellant argued the Committee erred in finding the coworker was a 'patient' under the Patient Criteria Regulation, asserting that dispensing a prescription did not constitute a 'direct interaction'.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, holding that the determination of whether a patient relationship existed was a question of mixed fact and law subject to deference.

The Court found no palpable and overriding error in the Committee's conclusion that dispensing a prescription and conducting a clinical verification constituted a direct interaction creating a pharmacist-patient relationship.

The moving parties sought a stay of a new Ontario government policy restricting international medical graduates from participating in the first iteration of the medical residency matching process (CaRMS) unless they attended high school in Ontario for two years.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for a stay, finding it lacked jurisdiction over the underlying application for judicial review.

The court held that the policy was not an exercise of a specific statutory power under the Judicial Review Procedure Act, nor was certiorari available against the Crown in these circumstances.

The inclusion of Charter arguments did not expand the court's statutory jurisdiction.

The applicant physician sought judicial review of a decision by the Inquiries, Complaints, and Reports Committee (ICRC) requiring him to complete a Specified Continuing Education and Remediation Program (SCERP) following several adverse event reports at his clinic.

The applicant argued the decision was unreasonable and the process was procedurally unfair due to skewed chart selection and alleged bias by the College's assessor.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding that the ICRC owed a relatively low degree of procedural fairness which was met, and that its decision was reasonable, justified, and intelligible based on the evidence of poor clinical care and deficient record-keeping.

The appellant, an operator of diagnostic imaging clinics, appealed a decision of the Health Services Appeal and Review Board upholding the Minister's requirement to reimburse over $1.1 million in facility fees.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal, finding that the Board breached its duty of procedural fairness by classifying the Ministry's sole witness as a 'litigant's employee with expertise' without giving the appellant prior notice or an opportunity to make submissions and call reply evidence.

The matter was remitted to the Board for a new hearing.

The applicant sought judicial review of a joint decision by the Ontario and British Columbia Information and Privacy Commissioners rejecting claims of solicitor-client and litigation privilege over documents related to a 2019 cyberattack.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, holding that the standard of review for privilege claims is correctness.

The Court found the Commissioners correctly determined that facts existing independently of privileged communications must be disclosed pursuant to statutory duties under the Personal Health Information Protection Act.

The Court also rejected the applicant's argument that the joint investigation breached procedural fairness, finding it was statutorily authorized and the applicant had acquiesced to the process.

The appellant, OHIP, appealed a decision of the Health Services Appeal and Review Board which granted the respondent funding for a vaginoplasty without penectomy in Texas.

OHIP argued the procedure was not a specifically listed insured service and was experimental.

The Divisional Court upheld the Board's decision, finding that the plain reading of the Schedule of Benefits lists vaginoplasty and penectomy as separate procedures, and that interpreting the schedule to require a penectomy would be inconsistent with the WPATH Standards of Care and Charter values.

The court also declined to allow OHIP to raise a new argument on appeal regarding out-of-country funding criteria.

The applicant nurse sought judicial review of a decision by the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) of the College of Nurses of Ontario, which required her to complete a remediation program and receive a caution for working for two public health employers concurrently during the same shifts.

The applicant argued she received ineffective assistance of counsel and that the decision was unreasonable.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding no factual basis for the ineffective assistance claim and concluding that the ICRC's decision was reasonable and justified based on the record.

The defendant hospitals brought a motion to quash the plaintiff's civil proceedings, which arose from the termination of his hospital privileges.

The plaintiff sought an adjournment of the motion pending the disposition of his related appeals before the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) and a review motion in the Divisional Court.

The court granted the adjournment, noting that the results of the administrative proceedings could impact the viability of the civil claims, and stayed the civil proceeding in the interim.

The applicant dentist sought judicial review of a decision by the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario.

The Committee had ordered the applicant to complete a remediation program and receive a verbal caution after he posted sexually suggestive TikTok videos linked to his dental practice.

The Divisional Court applied the reasonableness standard of review and dismissed the application, finding that the Committee's conclusions regarding the breach of practice advisories and the risk to the public were justified and available on the record.

Egale Canada brought an unopposed motion for leave to intervene as a friend of the court in an appeal concerning whether vaginoplasty without penectomy is an insured service under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

The court granted the motion, finding that Egale has relevant expertise regarding the systemic disadvantages faced by trans and nonbinary individuals in accessing gender-affirming care and would make a useful contribution to the resolution of the appeal without causing injustice or undue delay.

The applicant brought a motion for an adjournment.

The Divisional Court granted the adjournment request and imposed a timetable agreed upon by the parties.

Due to the inordinate delay in the case and the reasons for it, the court declined to award costs to any party.

The applicant pharmacy sought judicial review of a decision by the Executive Officer of the Ontario Public Drugs Programs to revoke its billing privileges following an inspection that revealed over $250,000 in unsubstantiated and non-compliant claims.

The applicant argued the decision was unreasonable because the new owner was not responsible for the prior owner's misconduct.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding the Executive Officer reasonably concluded that the new owner was responsible for the pharmacy's compliance and that problematic billing practices continued under his management.

The Ontario College of Pharmacists appealed a penalty decision of its Discipline Committee regarding a pharmacist who admitted to professional misconduct for submitting false billings to the Ontario Drug Benefit Plan.

The College argued the Panel erred by not imposing standard ownership restrictions on the pharmacist.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding that the Panel's decision was owed great deference, did not misapprehend the evidence, and reasonably balanced the principles of protection of the public, proportionality, and rehabilitation without imposing the requested restrictions.

The appellant physician was found to have committed professional misconduct involving sexual abuse of a patient, resulting in the mandatory revocation of his certificate of registration.

He brought a motion for a stay of the penalty pending his appeal to the Divisional Court.

The court applied the RJR-MacDonald test and dismissed the motion, finding that the appellant would not suffer irreparable harm and that the balance of convenience, given the public interest in a zero-tolerance approach to sexual misconduct by health professionals, weighed heavily against granting a stay.

The applicants sought an order in the nature of mandamus to compel the Chief Medical Officer of Health to halt the pediatric COVID-19 vaccination program in Ontario.

The respondent moved to quash the application for judicial review.

The court granted the motion to quash, finding it plain and obvious that the application could not succeed because the Chief Medical Officer of Health's authority to issue directives is discretionary and conditional on forming specific opinions, which were not pleaded.

The court also found that the applicants lacked public interest standing.

The applicant physician sought judicial review of a decision by the respondent hospitals not to renew his hospital privileges.

The hospitals brought a motion to quash the application, arguing it was an abuse of process and a collateral attack because the applicant had already appealed the decision to the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) and subsequently to the Divisional Court, where a decision was pending.

The court granted the motion and quashed the application, holding that permitting it to proceed would offend the principle discouraging fragmentation of the administrative process and would constitute a collateral attack on the ongoing statutory proceedings.

The defendants appealed a decision certifying a class action for intrusion upon seclusion.

The claim arose after a hospital nurse improperly accessed thousands of patient records to steal narcotics from an automated dispensing unit.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal and set aside the certification order, finding that the nurse's fleeting access to limited health information for the sole purpose of stealing drugs did not meet the 'highly offensive' threshold required for the tort of intrusion upon seclusion.

The College of Psychologists of Ontario appealed a decision of the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board ordering the College to register the respondent as a psychological associate.

The respondent had completed an online master's degree, which the College's Registration Committee found did not meet the resident study requirement and was not substantially similar.

The Board found the Committee acted improperly by not following the Board's prior recommendation that the program was substantially similar.

The Divisional Court granted the appeal, holding that the Committee was not bound by the Board's recommendation and that the Board erred in finding an improper exercise of power.

The matter was remitted to a newly constituted panel of the Registration Committee.