Payment delays and unfinished clinics

The construction of two vast medical complexes almost ready to open has come to a halt in downtown Montreal and Mount Royal, we have learned The Press. In the public and private documents that we have obtained, various companies that worked on these two projects allege that the conglomerate ELNA Médical has not paid them for several months and owes them a total of $4 million.

ELNA, where 500 Quebec doctors work, has doubled in size in two years, purchasing several clinics that are loss-making or on the verge of bankruptcy. But according to some documents, the conglomerate is short of cash and has given itself until November 30 to find funds and pay its debts. Its spokesperson, Jonathan Prunier, wrote to us that the company is “in the final phase of a financing process with a major investment bank” to be able to continue the construction of its complexes and “invest further in the ‘innovation “.

At the beginning of November, ELNA announced that it had entered into a three-part partnership with Telus Health, one of which was to launch “a first franchised clinic model in Canada” and offer “clinics owned by doctor-owners or by corporations, a range of services turnkey”. Mr. Prunier, however, wrote to us to ignore this press release “published prematurely” since “certain information could be subject to modification”, but that “the [discussions] certainly didn’t abort,” he says. Telus, for its part, wrote to us that “some information was indeed inaccurate”.

ELNA’s two new complexes were expected to welcome their first patients by the end of the year. The one in the city center is almost complete, we discover through the windows of 2020, boulevard Robert-Bourassa, next to the McGill metro station.

According to various documentary sources, the subcontractors of the developer Montarville Gestion et Construction, however, abandoned the site in October and will not take back their tools, unless they receive the $2 million they are demanding.

Montarville and Canderel, which manages the 2020 building, Robert-Bourassa, declined our interview requests, since they hope that work will be able to resume at the beginning of 2025. ELNA affirms for its part that the complex will open by the end of March.

Entrance and boarded up windows

At the Rockland Center in Mount Royal, ELNA’s financial troubles are visible. The company was to open a “flagship” facility with around 40 doctors and specialists there in 2021. Three years later, there is still no clinic. The entrance and the windows that ELNA had drilled into the brick of an exterior wall of the Rockland Center are boarded up.

The responsible contractor and its subcontractors registered in the land register legal construction hypothecs totaling more than $2 million against ELNA and the owner of the building, Cominar Real Estate Investment Fund.

The construction company which lodged the legal mortgage, Russ+Co, declined to comment.

One of the suppliers who filed a legal hypothec, Céramique Miva, is awaiting payment of $114,975. The owner of the company, Mario Mastrangelo, says that the construction of the Rockland Center clinic has been stopped since July 2023, because of ELNA’s financial problems. “All the finishing touches to the clinic are missing. »

The entrepreneur deplores the payment delays, which put his small business in danger.

In 2021, the president of ELNA, Laurent Amram, said in an interview with The Press want to set up a 24,000 square foot polyclinic at the Rockland Center, “a type of one-stop shop”, with, among other things, “high quality care covered by RAMQ” and a 100% private clinic.

The owner of the Rockland Center, Cominar, ensures that it maintains an “open channel” with ELNA so that its clinic can open “as soon as possible”. “We can’t wait for the situation to resolve on their side,” says Sandra L’Écuyer, head of communications.

Despite these difficulties, ELNA acquired one of the largest clinic chains in the province, Groupe Santé Brunswick, in January. Crushed by a debt of $42 million, the company sold the 10 clinics in its vast Pointe-Claire complex to ELNA, which ensured continuity of care there.

ELNA wrote to us that it had “temporarily paused” the Rockland site to “prioritize strategic opportunities linked to the expansion of [son] network “. And having made “the responsible decision to concentrate [ses] resources on clinics currently in operation [qui soignent] thousands of patients per day.

Over the past two years, many medical clinics in other networks have gone bankrupt, closed or been bought at the last minute, sometimes without notice (see following text).

Mixing public and private

As The Press As reported recently, ELNA has placed several of its state-funded clinics under the same roof as its 100% private clinics — a controversial arrangement¹.

Called to comment, the D^r Marc-André Amyot, president of the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec, was relieved that only two unfinished complexes were affected by this uncertainty. “Because when big clinics close, the impact is serious. We cannot relocate dozens of doctors overnight. »

1. Read the file “ELNA Clinics: blurred boundaries between public and private”