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Horizon, Vitalité weren’t given option to take over virtual care services
Published Feb 16, 2026 • Last updated 10 hours ago • 5 minute read
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Premier Susan Holt is pictured here in this file photo. BRUNSWICK NEWS ARCHIVESArticle content
Premier Susan Holt has thrown her support behind a new virtual health-care deal after initially raising questions on social media amid public outcry.
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Negotiations are currently underway with Foundever, a Luxembourg-headquartered firm that beat out New Brunswick-based eVisitNB through a request-for-proposal process for the province’s virtual care contract.
“I went through every step of the RFP process with the team – the scoring, the background of the company, where their staff are located, where the data would be stored, where the health-care staff would be based and about the company’s roots in New Brunswick,” Holt said in a statement Tuesday.
“I’m convinced that this is in the best interest of New Brunswickers.”
Brunswick News had requested an interview with Holt on Tuesday to ask what, if any, role eVisitNB will play in virtual care moving forward after she indicated on social media that the government is “looking at creative options to find a win-win here” given the company has “worked hard” and served the province for years.
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Brunswick News also wanted to ask the premier about the revelation that Vitalité Health Network has indicated it has the capacity to expand its virtual care services but wasn’t asked to do so. The newspaper was not provided an interview with the premier.
Last week, Dr. France Desrosiers, president and CEO of Vitalité Health Network, told a legislative committee that the regional health authority could not only expand virtual care services but do so at a cheaper cost.
Desrosiers revealed this insight under questioning from Progressive Conservative MLA Rob Weir during a legislative committee last week.
About 20 per cent of Vitalité visits are already happening virtually through its primary care system, Desrosiers told public accounts committee members in French.
“We have the capability to offer the complete service, but we were not asked if we could offer it,” Desrosiers continued. “We would have the capability and at a lesser cost.”
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It’s not known how much Foundever will cost New Brunswick taxpayers once it takes over provincewide virtual care services this spring.
In a statement Monday, Progressive Conservative MLA Bill Hogan drew attention to privacy concerns, referring to a 2022 data breach involving the Florida-based Sitel Group (now known as Foundever).
According to a March 2022 press release, the Sitel Group took “swift action to contain the attack and to notify and protect any potentially impacted clients” who were part of the impacted Sykes network, which had been acquired a year prior by Sitel.
“Many New Brunswickers have emailed the premier and copied me, concerned with the care of their personal medical data taken from eVisit, a New Brunswick company with 100% Canadian data storage, and given to an American firm with a huge blemish on their record just three years ago, and data storage in the U.S. and accessible worldwide,” Hogan, the PCs’ health critic, said in his statement.
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Brunswick News has repeatedly requested an interview with a representative of Foundever. No one has been made available to date.
Margaret Melanson, president and CEO of Horizon Health Network, told the legislative committee last week that her regional health authority also wasn’t involved in the RFP process.
“Honestly we heard about the new provider probably the same way many of you did through the media,” Melanson told MLAs during her appearance before the public accounts committee last week.
As of April 1, Foundever is expected to replace eVisitNB, the latter of which was started by two New Brunswick physicians as an out-of-pocket health-care option in 2020.
The virtual care service started to be publicly funded in 2022 thanks to the then Higgs Progressive Conservative government.
Melanson described eVisitNB as a “godsend” during the COVID-19 pandemic as it provided episodic care through its standalone system for those afraid to leave their homes to seek medical treatment.
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Deputy Health Minister Eric Beaulieu has indicated that better integration with the primary care system was the main improvement the government was looking for through the next virtual care service contract.
eVisitNB is already integrated with Tele-Care 811, allowing for 811 nurses to book virtual care appointments on behalf of callers, according to Dr. Hanif Chatur, co-founder and CEO of eVisitNB.
“Our current integration with Tele-Care 811 clearly demonstrates our capacity to continue integrating with emergency departments, NB Health Link and primary care clinics,” Chatur said in an email.
Melanson admitted to the committee that Horizon didn’t attempt to connect its systems with eVisitNB. She explained that the transition to electronic medical records and a clinical information system is already underway in the province.
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A digital health strategy highlighting both of those initiatives was rolled out by the Holt government Friday.
Even if Horizon had decided to connect with eVisitNB, Melanson said there would have been privacy and “other issues” to sort out, and while not “insurmountable,” the RHA knew the virtual care service contract was headed to an RFP process.
Green party Leader David Coon questioned last week the province’s deputy health minister on why Horizon and Vitalité couldn’t take over providing the virtual care service.
“If you want to integrate these two things more closely, then you bring the virtual health-care services into the public health-care system, not farm it out to a private company, and worse, farm it out to a private company that’s not even inside New Brunswick that doesn’t know how our system works,” Coon later told reporters.
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On Tuesday, the New Brunswick Health Coalition publicly released a letter addressed to the premier, asking her, given Vitalité’s revelation, to “explain to the public why this virtual health service cannot be done by our public health system.”
Last week, Beaulieu told the public accounts committee that there’s a “certain level of expertise” required to operate a virtual platform, and given existing primary care challenges, “diverting the attention of the (regional health authorities) into a virtual system could be challenging.”
But Desrosiers disputed that assessment of the situation on the ground.
“During the pandemic, the (New Brunswick Medical Society) offered the equipment to all the doctors who were interested in virtual services, so the majority of them started to do so,” she told the committee in French.
“It’s not all the doctors who do it – we agree on that – but the majority offer the services that can be offered in a different way. Some do it by phone, some do it by video, but the equipment and the expertise are already in our teams.”
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