Tag Archives: Royal Ottawa Group

Mental Health CEOs outliers when it comes to executive pay

What is it about being a CEO of a psychiatric hospital in Ontario that warrants much greater compensation than executives of similar-sized general hospitals?

Last month we took a look at who was making more than double the Premier’s salary. While not uniform, most CEOs in that compensation range worked for very large hospitals, such as Bob Bell, who earned $753,992 in compensation for helming the University Health Network, which has an operating budget of about $1.8 billion, or Jack Kitts who earned $630,485 on a budget of $866 million as CEO of The Ottawa Hospital.

What was more surprising was that two of four major stand-alone psychiatric hospitals placed leaders on this list. Of the four CEOs, only one lists a clinical background in her on-line curriculum vitae. Dr. Catherine Zahn, President and CEO of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), is a practising neurologist. Glenna Raymond (Ontario Shores), Carol Lambie (Waypoint) and George Weber (Royal Ottawa Group) are career administrators. Weber has an MBA with extensive advanced management training. Raymond states she is a certified health executive. Lambie is a certified general accountant, although her contract calls on her to finish her MBA by the end of 2011.

These qualifications are not unusual among Ontario hospital CEOs, yet two of four appear to be collecting compensation that is far beyond those at comparable sized facilities.

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Are there more managers and fewer front line staff? At some hospitals, absolutely

Earlier this year we issued a freedom of information request to 20 sample hospitals where OPSEU represents health care workers to understand whether managers are in fact replacing front line health care workers.

Nine of 20 hospitals reported an increase in managers proportionate to front line staff over the past five years.

It’s a frequent complaint we hear.

While the requests were sent out in February, the information took much of the year to trickle in.

Resources are getting ever tighter in the hospital world – Ontario hospitals are experiencing no increase in their base budgets this year. How hospitals allocate their funding does matter.

Some hospitals actually reduced managers – at Kingston General Hospital, for example, managers dropped from 146 in 2008 to 125 in 2012. Staff has remained almost exactly the same over the past five years at 2,453. Other hospitals that dropped managers include the Chatham Kent Health Alliance, South Grey Bruce Health Care and the Windsor Regional Hospital.

Others show that our members were right.

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