VIHA CEO Howard Waldner

Trouble at the Top

Is VIHA in meltdown?

There’s an ill wind blowing in the management ranks of the Vancouver Island Health Authority and observers say it’s only a matter of time before the public will face the storm.

On April 22 it was announced in a VIHA press release that CEO Howard Waldner would be jetting off to a new gig with the Hywel Dda Health Board in South Wales. But the farewell party was put on hold when another press release arrived soon after stating that, contrary to information issued just two weeks prior, Waldner would, in fact, be staying on as the ministry of health’s chief yes-man on Vancouver Island.

Then this week word emerged that VIHA’s chief operating officer Mike Conroy would be returning to Alberta—where he and Waldner were colleagues at the Calgary Health Region earlier in the decade—to take up a vice-presidency role with Alberta Health Services.

VIHA board chair Jac Kreut doesn’t see anything particularly unusual that the health authority’s two top dogs should be pursuing other career options.

“We seem to do an excellent job of training our people to take on greater and greater responsibilities,” he told Monday. “As a result, they are widely sought after across the country.”

Kreut adds, “Secondly, compared to some jurisdictions, our compensation scales are considerably lower than what you might otherwise find. I know Alberta pays significantly more than we do, as does Ontario.”

The notion that VIHA’s executive strata is inadequately rewarded for its daily labours may strike the wage-earning class as a bit of a stretch.

VIHA compensation documents indicate that for the 2007-08 fiscal year, Waldner’s total compensation was $417,425, while Conroy took in $312,927.

Phil Lyons, outgoing co-chair of the South Island Health Coalition, says VIHA management’s eagerness to implement the provincial government’s plan to bring private players into the public health realm and the resulting deterioration in care levels makes a quick escape the preferred option.

“When you’re put in the position of being the axe-man for the public system, and then you’re left with the responsibility of managing that public system with ever-decreasing funding from the central government to do it properly, then you’ve got guys who are really caught in a bind,” says Lyons.

Also throwing in the towel at VIHA recently were home and community care director Lynda Foley and residential services director Heather Cook, both earning more than $110,000 and both now destined for the Fraser Health Authority.

VIHA’s service plan for 2008 predicted what the authority referred to as “funding pressures” of $54 million in 2009 and $57 million in 2010.

Islanders would surely like to know whether these shortfalls have come home to roost, but VIHA’s 2009/10 service plan for the fiscal year that began in April, if it exists, has not been made public—as the B.C. health ministry in December ordered the province’s health authorities to delay work on those documents, lest they contain information that might hurt the BC Liberal’s election chances, says NDP health critic Adrian Dix.

“They don’t really have a plan, they’re clearly going to have a significant budget shortfall, there seems to be nothing in the way of a plan to deal with that budget shortfall, so the situation is likely to get worse, not better over time, because the government didn’t tell the truth is the election campaign,” says Dix. “Now they’re facing the crux of the issue, which is that the organization, the health authority, is facing a serious shortfall.”

Of course, attrition has not been the only characteristic of the VIHA executive of late.

In January, the health authority brought on board a new chief of communications and external relations in the form of Neil Sweeney. His appointment—curiously without a press release—came after community backlash over the decision to close the Cowichan Lodge extended care home and a $17,000 audit of VIHA’s public relations machine.

He joined VIHA after recent PR posts with Labatt Breweries and Enbridge Pipelines—and, more interestingly, as premier Gordon Campbell’s former deputy chief of staff, issues management.

His name appeared on the VIHA payroll more than a month before the audit that recommended creating his position was released to the public. Sweeney comes to the organization with a tidy $155,000 starting salary.

If the present tumult in VIHA’s top tier is a harbinger of things to come, Islanders might want to get their aches and pains checked out now, because the future seems in flux. M