FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2006
McGuinty should
reconsider controversial LHIN appointment, says OPSEU
Proof LHINs not local
LONDON: The McGuinty government
should reconsider the hiring of a former British health
executive with a controversial past to run the health system
for south western Ontario, says the Ontario Public Service
Employees Union.
OPSEU Regional Vice-President
Ron Elliot called into question Health Minister George
Smitherman’s appointment of Tony Woolgar as Chief Executive
Officer of the South West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN),
serving 800,000 people from Lake Erie to the Bruce Peninsula.
As CEO of Britain’s North
Bristol National Health Service Trust, Woolgar’s legacy
included a 44-million pound debt ($90 million Canadian), as
reported by accounting firm Deloitte and Touche in a 2003
probe ordered by the Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire
strategic health authority.
“Smitherman claims these LHINs
are supposed to be all about local access and community
control with health care decisions made ‘at the community
level,’ to use his own words. But this appointment is proof
that Minister Smitherman believes no-one in the community can
be trusted by this government to make these decisions,” said
Elliot. “Instead he is letting our health care dollars be
doled out by an unelected board.”
“Woolgar earns $230,000 a year
to, in part, contract out our health care services to
for-profit companies,” Elliot added. “In light of the Gomery
Commission Report, the provincial government should be very
careful.”
Deloitte and Touche also said
the North Bristol executive group was “conducting its business
in a dysfunctional, uncoordinated manner.” It said Woolgar
presided over a management culture of fear that “was not
conducive to effective team working.”
Woolgar resigned in Dec. 2002
after less than a year in the job. The North Bristol NHS paid
him 71,000 pounds ($144,000 Canadian) to ease his way out,
according to the British Nursing News.
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Contact:
Ron Elliot, Regional
Vice-President, OPSEU cell: 519-318-0068
