An Ontario doctor has lost her appeal to the province’s Health Services Board and ordered to pay back over $600,000 she claimed after having undergraduate medical student volunteers mass vaccinate thousands of individuals in 2021.

Every COVID vaccine an Ontario doctor administered came with kickbacks from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP)’s fee-for-service model. For each injection administered in 2021, a doctor could claim $13. If the sole reason for the patient’s visit was to get a COVID shot, an additional $5.6 could be claimed. 

In December of 2021, Kingston-based Dr. Elaine Ma set up pop up clinics on property outside of her licensed practice, at St. Lawrence College and Queen’s University Richardson Stadium.

To help administer the shots, Dr. Ma recruited a bunch of undergraduate medical student volunteers. However, one of the stipulations for her OHIP claim to be valid, was that she provide proof that she employed the medical experts who administered the shots for her.  Another condition was that the shots take place at her office.

Thousands of individuals received shots each day over a period of days in December 2021.

OHIP originally approved her claim but then demanded she pay it all back after conducting an audit, which Dr. Ma appealed.

Ultimately, the Review Board found that “the persons who administered vaccines at the clinics organized by Dr. Ma during the Review Period were not her employees.”

In an email, Dr. Ma told The Counter Signal, “Vaccinations were administered by medical students, physicians, myself.  The majority of smaller clinics had more medical students vaccinating, while the majority of the vaccination clinics over the Christmas and New Years holidays were given by physicians.”

Asked if doctors were financially incentivised to vaccinate, she replied, “Family doctors were offered fee-for-service billing codes for vaccinating patients.  We were therefore incentivized to be as efficient as possible at getting shots in arms.  However, OHIP has said essentially said that they didn’t expect this level of efficiency.”