Executive exodus continues at Shared Health with three recent departures

Manitoba’s provincial health authority is looking for its fourth chief financial officer since 2023 and additional replacements after the recent departures of three executives.

Shared Health wouldn’t explain why two former executives — corporate services vice-president and CFO Ken Klassen, and Georgina Veldhorst, vice-president of quality, strategy and performance — are no longer in their roles.

A spokesperson said Ben Fry retired as chief operating officer of mental health and addictions in July.

“Interim leadership are in place while recruitment for the positions is underway,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

Klassen told the Free Press his final day was July 21 after he accepted an early retirement offer. Attempts to reach Veldhorst were unsuccessful.

“The timing isn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but I was at that part of my career regardless,” Klassen, 61, said of his retirement. “It was an opportunity I was happy to take.”

Regarding turnover in the CFO position in recent years, Klassen said it’s a very difficult role, especially when combined with the role as lead of corporate services, which is a large portfolio on its own.

“It was a very full job, a very demanding job, but also very rewarding,” he said. “I got to work with many wonderful people. I’m really proud of my time at Shared Health.”

Klassen, who joined the organization in 2023, said former CEO Lanette Siragusa and her replacement, interim CEO Dr. Chris Christodoulou, are “excellent” leaders who set out to change the culture and develop Shared Health as a provincial organization.

“Unfortunately, there has been a huge turnover in CEOs and CFOs,” Klassen said. “I think it’s difficult for an organization to optimize its growth and improvements in culture and other things when that happens.”

Shared Health, which has more than 18,000 employees, was created in 2018 by the former Tory government to oversee provincial planning, health services and operational support for Manitoba’s health system.

Its responsibilities includes the operation of Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, rural and northern emergency medical services and public-sector laboratory and diagnostic imaging.

After being elected in 2023, the NDP government vowed to cut Shared Health’s administrative costs and redirect money to front-line care.

Premier Wab Kinew said his government removed eight per cent of Shared Health’s senior management in its first year in office.

He said resources are being taken away from areas that don’t affect patients to help fund additional staffing.

Earlier this week, Kinew announced the health-care system has added 4,725 net new workers since the election.

The government’s 2026-27 budget projected a nearly $1 billion increase in spending for the Manitoba Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Department.

“The timing isn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but I was at that part of my career regardless.”

A government spokesperson said Shared Health staffing and personnel decisions are operational matters made by the organization. The Opposition Tories declined to comment.

Siragusa and Winnipeg Regional Health Authority CEO Mike Nader were fired in early 2025 after separate audits of the organizations’ finances between April 2018 and March 2024 highlighted deficits that impeded each authority’s ability “to make the best decisions for patient care, plan effectively for future health care needs and support front-line staff.”

Siragusa was hired after Adam Topp resigned four months into the job in April 2023.

Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals president Jason Linklater expressed concern about turnover in senior leadership roles. Shared Health and WRHA have had interim CEOs for almost 18 months, he noted.

“That is not the type of stable leadership that I think is required to be able to have a long-term horizon in creating a health-care system that’s sustainable,” Linklater said. “It really is a bigger story than just positions revolving at the executive level. It has resonance throughout the entire system.”

“It really is a bigger story than just positions revolving at the executive level. It has resonance throughout the entire system.”

Shared Health employs many of MAHCP’s 7,600 members.

Klassen was Southern Health region’s CFO and corporate services lead before he joined Shared Health, initially as vice-president of corporate services. He took on the CFO portfolio after Dale Gustafson resigned in June 2024.

Gustafson took over from Jennifer Bjarnarson, who was Shared Health’s CFO and shared administrative services lead from December 2022 to May 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile. She left to take a role outside the organization, the Free Press reported at the time.

Klassen said Southern Health had balanced budgets during his time as its CFO. The same role at Shared Health was a “large challenge,” he said, because the organization had a $115-million deficit when he joined in the 2024 fiscal year.

He said the deficit — on a $2 billion-plus budget — was reduced to $35 million in the 2026 fiscal year due, in part, to additional government funding and cost reductions mostly in administrative areas.

— With files from Carol Sanders

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca