WRHA loses CEO, chief medical officer on eve of new provincial health organization

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This article was published 29/06/2017 (3053 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has parted ways with its CEO, and its chief medical officer is moving on to head a new organization the province hopes will transform the health care system.

The departures are occurring as the WRHA and the Pallister government launch the most significant overhaul of the city’s hospital system in a generation.

But the WRHA’s board chair, Karen Dunlop, said Thursday she is confident that the organization still has “a strong team” to carry out its ambitious plans.

“The WRHA remains committed to the plan that we have announced publicly. We have confidence in our staff and in our teams to deliver that plan. And we will work hard to make sure that those plans are implemented in a safe and appropriate way,” Dunlop said in an interview.

Late Wednesday, the WRHA board announced that Milton Sussman, the organization’s president and CEO since October 2015, was leaving immediately.

Dunlop said Sussman’s departure was a mutual decision and that the two sides “have parted on good terms.” She estimated it will take six months to have a successor in place following a national search. The organization’s chief operating officer, Réal Cloutier, is filling the role on an interim basis.

Dunlop said the board will not wait until a new CEO is installed to replace Dr. Brock Wright, the WRHA’s senior vice-president and chief medical officer. Wright is to head the new provincial health organization announced by the Pallister government on Wednesday that will centrally manage certain clinical and administrative tasks now carried out independently by the province’s five regional health authorities.

The WRHA must ensure it has “the right leadership in place to move our plans forward and take care of the people who rely on us,” Dunlop said of the need to replace Wright expeditiously.

According to Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen, the WRHA’s role will be scaled back with the creation of the new Shared Health Services Manitoba, which Wright will head.

The streamlining of regional health authority administrative functions and improved co-ordination of health services are expected to save at least $5 million in Shared Health’s first year, according to a background paper released by the province on Wednesday.

The Health Sciences Centre, now under the WRHA’s umbrella, will operate under the purview of the new provincial agency as of April 1. Some, such as Liberal MLA Jon Gerrard, are critical of the move, arguing that day-to-day oversight for hospitals should remain with regional health authorities.

Dunlop said the co-ordination of city hospital services — the reason the WRHA was created in the first place — should not suffer with HSC answering to a different supervising body.

“We are going to work closely with Dr. Brock Wright to ensure that health care services become more strongly integrated throughout the province,” she said. “That includes Winnipeg. He (Wright) made that commitment to us (Wednesday.”

Meanwhile, Dunlop said she is confident that the three remaining hospital emergency rooms in Winnipeg will have the capacity to handle larger patient volumes when ERs at Concordia, Seven Oaks and Victoria hospitals are shut as part of the hospital reorganization plan.

“We’ve been receiving reports from our senior management that Health Sciences Centre and St. Boniface have plans in place to add capacity to their emergency services within their current physical footprint,” she said, while acknowledging that renovations will eventually be required at St. Boniface.

The new emergency room now under construction at Grace General Hospital was designed to handle significantly more visitors than the current space, Dunlop said. “We feel comfortable that there is going to be a real good capacity at the Grace Hospital to absorb additional volumes as anticipated by our plan.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca