NDP health critic Adrian Dix is calling on the government to tighten the controls on its travel assistance program after a report found that unknown numbers of British Columbians may have abused it.

“It's not complicated to run these kinds of programs; it really isn't,” Dix told the Georgia Straight.

The travel assistance program (TAP) is intended to provide free ferry travel for patients referred by a physician for nonemergency medical services. It also covers the fare for their cars and for medically required escorts.

There is no direct proof of abuse of the program. However, a report obtained last week by the Straight under a freedom-of-information request raises strong suspicions that some people are improperly obtaining free trips.

“[We] were unable to confirm whether patients used TAP to attend their specialty-service appointments, as specialty services are not billed through the [Medical Services Plan] billing system and therefore limited information is available for these types of medical appointments,” the report notes.

The report, completed last January 23 by the Finance Ministry's internal audit-and-advisory-services division, covers B.C. ferry travel for 2003 and 2004.

The investigation has uncovered some pretty sloppy practices.

Some of the forms used by travellers may not be legitimate, according to the audit, which was conducted at the request of the Health Ministry. “The single copy TAP forms are not pre-numbered with sequential control numbers and may be photocopied,” the report says.

According to the report, another basic safeguard was not in place at the time of the audit, for which the fieldwork was completed in April 2005. “There is no policy requiring physicians to safeguard blank TAP forms in their offices to reduce the risk of unauthorized people gaining access to them.”

Even when physicians did fill out the forms, they sometimes left out critical information, such as the date, their own practitioner's number, the name of the practitioner the patient was supposedly going to see, and the appointment date. Some of the forms were not even signed.

The auditors also found some physicians doling out “numerous” TAP forms to single patients at one time.

No wonder the program showed a $409,000 deficit in 2004–05, when it cost taxpayers $3.67 million. MAXIMUS BC, the U.S.–owned company that administers the Medical Services Plan and PharmaCare, now runs the travel assistance program.

The auditors provided no evaluation of the amount of improper use because the controls were so poor that it wasn't possible to come up with such an estimate.

What is known is the number of trips made. In 2004, 63,000 free ferry trips were made under the program.

When the former NDP government launched it in 1993, the initiative had no budget. Although the Health Ministry administered the program, it began as a goodwill gesture by BC Ferries and private travel companies, including BC Rail, VIA Rail, Pacific Coach Lines, Grey Line Victoria, and several airlines.

Back in the days when BC Ferries was a typical Crown corporation, it funded the free ferry travel from its own budget. But on April 1, 2003, the budget for the various social programs of the BC Ferry Services Corporation””as it then became known””was transferred to the Transportation Ministry, and the following year the Health Ministry began paying for the travel assistance program.

In the report, besides recommending that the government tighten the controls on the program, the auditors offer several suggestions to “address the program's fiscal sustainability”””in other words, to cut costs.

One possibility is a means test, like the one applied to premium assistance for the Medical Services Plan, the report says. Another is to reduce or end the free ferry travel for escorts. Ferry travel for escorts costs an astonishing 68 percent of the program's total travel budget, according to the report.

The auditors also found that a small number of patients are responsible for a high percentage of the program's total costs. To deal with this, the auditors suggest considering a limit on the number of free trips a patient may take in a year.

The NDP's Dix said that the travel assistance program is more important than ever, thanks to the Liberals' centralization of health care. “It's absolutely essential, both for public credibility and to ensure that British Columbians benefit in the maximum possible way, that they run these programs efficiently,” Dix explained. “Unfortunately, the premier has broken his promise to bring health care to people in the communities where they live, so more and more British Columbians have been forced to travel.”

According to comments included in the report, the Health Ministry generally accepts the auditors' recommendations. Spokesperson Sarah Plank told the Straight that the ministry is now conducting a full review of the program. Pending the completion of the review, no changes have been made, she said.