N.B. physicians’ college has ‘total confidence’ in medical officer notwithstanding practice history

The practice story of a Saint John region’s medical officer of health, that has come underneath glow by a recently expelled review report, lifted no red flags for a College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick, says a registrar.

Dr. Ed Schollenberg was wakeful Dr. Kim Barker had quiescent as a conduct of Algoma Public Health in Ontario in Jan 2015, after a report that a halt arch financial officer she had hired was a convicted fraudster.

He also knew about the “kerfuffle” in Nunavut in Oct 2018, when the supervision abruptly announced she was “no longer employed” by open health.

“But we know, from what we got out of all of that, and still have out of all of that, there’s zero that says she can’t yield a use she’s been recruited to do,” pronounced Schollenberg.

The conduct of a provincial regulatory physique pronounced he has “total confidence” in Barker’s medical certification and abilities. He wouldn’t have postulated her a looseness to rehearse in New Brunswick if he didn’t, he said.

KPMG conducted a debate review after Barker quiescent from Algoma Public Health, though a news usually became open in new days after the Supreme Court of Canada deserted her extensive conflict to keep it private.

The news suggests Barker hired a convicted fraudster —Shaun Rootenberg — to manage a unit’s finances because she wanted to start a regretful attribute with him.

It’s misleading how most a New Brunswick supervision knew about Barker’s practice story before it hired her as a medical officer of health for a south, famous as Region 2, that covers Sussex to St. Stephen.

I bewail carrying hired this person, but I can’t change a past. I can usually contend that we will never repeat something like that again.– Kim Barker, medical officer of health, Region 2

Department of Health orator Bruce Macfarlane declined to comment, referring to it as a “personnel matter.”

Barker told CBC News “everyone was totally aware,” and that she was hired formed on her abilities.

“I bewail carrying hired this person, but I can’t change a past. I can usually contend that we will never repeat something like that again.”

Barker graduated from medical propagandize in Toronto in 1996, and has a specialty in open health and surety medicine, according to a college’s website.

She has been protected to rehearse in New Brunswick given Apr 2019.

“It’s a pleasure to accommodate we for a initial time,” she told reporters on May 27, during a news discussion in a midst of a measles outbreak.

According to a KPMG audit, Barker began exchanging emails with a male she primarily knew as Shaun Rothberg in July 2013 and their communications became “increasingly personal.”

Barker told a auditors she was not in an insinuate attribute with Rothberg at a time, though hoped one would develop.

She believed that if Rothberg was supposing with practice in Sault Ste. Marie, a odds of a attribute between them “would increase,” according to a report.

Algoma Public Health’s former business administrator had been consummated in Jul 2013 for reasons not settled in a report.

In early August, Rothberg offered to introduce Barker to Ron Hulse, who ran a consulting firm.

Knew temperament before hired

Algoma Public Health hired Hulse to assistance in a hunt for a new arch financial officer, plus someone to fill a pursuit in a interim.

Rothberg was hired for the interim position in November.

Barker did not divulge a “nature of her relationship” with Rothberg to a house before to his appointment, a news states. “Barker went on to impersonate her disaster to do so as a ‘complete miss of judgment.'”

Rothberg turned out to be Shaun Rootenberg, who had been convicted of fraud and served time in a sovereign prison.

According to a auditors, an hearing of emails shows Barker was wakeful that Rothberg’s genuine name was Rootenberg as early as Oct. 8, 2013 — approximately 7 weeks before he was hired.

A few months after his agreement ended in a open of 2014, Sault Ste. Marie news site Sootoday.com reported his rapist history.

Barker quiescent shortly after and the forensic review was ordered.

4-year quarrel for report

Sootoday.com filed a leisure of information ask to obtain a duplicate of a report, that Algoma Public Health, as good as a mayor of Sault Ste. Marie wanted expelled to a public. 

Barker took a matter to court, arguing a news was false and infringed on her privacy, though a Supreme Court of Canada discharged her final bid to interest in Dec 2019.

The review found Rootenberg did not take any open income when he was a arch financial officer of Algoma Public Health.

Rootenberg refused to attend in the audit.

Barker was subsequently hired as Nunavut’s emissary arch medical health officer in Apr 2015 and was promoted to arch medical health officer in Jan 2016.

Her depart from that position came a same day she spoke on a government’s behalf, answering questions about authorised cannabis on CBC’s morning show, Qulliq.

But a spokesperson with a Department of Health pronounced in an emailed matter that Barker was behaving on full management as a government’s arch medical officer of health when she seemed on Qulliq, and that her depart has zero to do with her ability as a medical authority.

Barker purported she was fired but cause.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/kim-barker-new-brunswick-health-algoma-nunavut-rootenberg-1.5451057?cmp=rss