Helga Bryant, former chief executive officer of the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority (NRHA) in Flin Flon, has been named as the chief executive officer for the new Northern Regional Health Authority, created as the result of a merger forced almost three months ago by the provincial government between the Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) and the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority.
Gloria King, former chief executive officer of the Burntwood Regional Health Authority, will reportedly stay on in Thompson and be in charge in this area for the new health authority and report to Bryant in Flin Flon. It's not known at this point what her new title will be.
"By merging RHAs, the government expects to eliminate 30 to 35 executive positions and more than half of the RHA boards, directing more money into supporting Manitoba's hospitals, QuickCare Clinics and access centres," the province said in a background report released in April.
Neither Bryant nor King have responded to e-mail requests sent Monday morning for interviews as of press time at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Directors from both regional health authorities boards involved rubber-stamped the ministerial directive to merge the NRHA and BRHA in due course shortly after the province's announcement in April.
The downsizing in the number of regional health authorities is expected to the save the province $10 million over the next three years. The regional health authorities model was created in Manitoba in 1997 under former Progressive Conservative premier Gary Filmon.
Word of Bryant's appointment as CEO of the new Northern Regional Health Authority came in a news release sent out June 1 by e-mail by Linda Biglow, executive assistant to the BRHA board and CEO at 4:27 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.
Oddly for a health authority or government news release, it has no date, is unsigned and quotes no one in delivering its news of who, how or when exactly Bryant was appointed. While the news release ends by saying, "Further information on the mergers is available at the Manitoba Health website: http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/rha/index.html," but as of mid-morning June 5 that website was last updated on May 10.
The Microsoft Word document the news release was created on lists in its internal properties summary Don Teranishi, of Communications Services Manitoba, as the author, although it is unclear whether he actually wrote it.
The news release was apparently created at 2:46 p.m. May 30 - last Wednesday afternoon.
Manitoba NDP Finance Minister Stan Struthers announced in his budget speech on April 17 the Burntwood and NOR-MAN Regional Health Authorities would be merged into a new Northern Regional Health Authority, as part of a cost-saving decision to reduce the number of health authorities in Manitoba from 11 to five.
The Northern Regional Health Authority will cover about 61 per cent of Manitoba's landmass and provide primary health care services for some 73,000 people - or about six per cent of the province's population.
Excluding hamlets, cottage settlements and Saskatchewan towns near the Manitoba border, the new Northern Regional Health Authority will provide health care services to 46 communities in an area bounded roughly by The Pas in the southwest to St. Theresa Point in the southeast and everything north to the Nunavut boundary at the 60th parallel - with the exception of Churchill, with the tiny Churchill Regional Health Authority being merged with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, as the two bodies are already closely connected, the province says.
Bryant, new chief executive officer of the newly-created Northern Regional Health Authority, completed a Bachelor of Science in nursing degree at Brandon University in 1993 and a master's degree in health care administration through Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Mich. in 1997.
She was appointed executive director of the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba on Sept. 8, 2009. Prior to that she was vice-president and chief nursing officer of the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg from 2002 to 2009, the province's largest tertiary care hospital.
Before working at Health Sciences Centre, she was vice- president of acute care and diagnostic services for the Brandon Regional Health Authority from January 1998 to September 2002.
She has been principal of Helga Bryant and Associates since January 2011.
Bryant was named interim chief executive officer of the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority May 16, 2011, less than two weeks after then-CEO Drew Lockhart resigned amid a wave of controversy and public discontent with the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority. A financial audit of NOR-MAN uncovered a gym membership for Lockhart in Winnipeg and missing documentation to back up reimbursed expenses.
In late 2010, NDP provincial Health Minister Theresa Oswald ordered an independent operational review of the NRHA following a series of public complaints. In May 2011, the ensuing report was released. It made 44 recommendations for change, all of which, the province and NRHA said, would be implemented.
As of May 28, Bryant said the NRHA had integrated 28 of the 44 recommendations; half of the remaining 16, she said, "very well underway," three necessitate partnering with other organizations and five are in the early stages of implementation, as they have created challenges or require multiple years to accomplish.
Meanwhile, things have been no bed of roses here in Thompson at the Burntwood Regional Health Authority over the last several years. The BRHA, while not subject to an independent operational review, also found itself in the public eye in a spate of bad news stories, including the acrimonious events a year ago surrounding the departure of Dr. Alan Rich, the longest-serving physician in Thompson, where Rich's 40-year career, at least at Thompson General Hospital, ended badly after a high-profile dispute with by Dr. Hisham Tassi, an internist, and Dr. Hussam Azzam, vice-president of medical services.
Tassi and Azzam filed complaints against Rich in relation to his behavior and comments in earlier meetings with them, which they said had been inappropriate. The BRHA medical advisory committee considered the case May 31, 2011, after earlier attempts at informal resolution failed. Rich had offered to apologize to Azzam but disagreed over what form the apology would take. Rich continues to practice medicine part-time in Thompson from his office in the Professional Building on Selkirk Avenue, where he has been a long-time tenant of J.B. Johnston Ventures Limited, Mayor Tim Johnston's family property holding company, and in Swan River, where he his semi-retired.
The year before the Rich episode, the Burntwood Regional Health Authority found itself for a time under an intense provincial media spotlight when its board of directors unanimously banned then Grassroots News columnist Hussain Guisti for life from all its public board meetings on May 27, 2010.
BRHA board chair Lloyd Flett said the board's action was taken in response to "a very difficult and unusual situation caused by Mr. Guisti's prior and ongoing behaviour during and as a result of board meetings." The statement went on to say that the situation caused by Guisti had gone on for over a year and that the board had given him a warning before taking the action of May 27."
In fact, Duke Beardy, chief of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation at Split Lake, whose term as BRHA chair ended Dec. 1, 2009, took the opportunity in his BRHA annual general meeting report six months earlier on Nov. 25, 2009, when discussing senior staff, to say, "Unfortunately days that could have been spent on patient care are lost to dealing with media."
Said Flett in banning Guisti: "The board felt compelled to act to ensure that the RHA can conduct the necessary business of the region and to serve its communities. Ongoing, inaccurate portrayals related to BRHA operations and staff have affected also their ability to conduct work and serve the communities in the region," the release also states, saying the situation got so bad that board members were reluctant to speak out at meeting for fear of being 'misrepresented.'"
Asked by the Thompson Citizen at the time how Guisti's actual conduct in the open meetings he had attended was interruptive or disruptive - as opposed to the alleged impact of his journalism on BRHA board members or staff - Flett thought for a while and finally offered two examples: once Guisti entered a meeting during the opening prayer, which Flett said the board found disruptive, and another time he helped himself to some taxpayer-provided BRHA lunch at an adjacent table in the boardroom. Guisti denied ever availing himself of a free lunch.
In a May 10 op-ed piece in the Winnipeg Free Press, Jonathon Naylor, editor of The Reminder in Flin Flon, suggested the amalgamation of the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority and the Burntwood Regional Health Authority "allows the NDP to finally rid itself of two of its biggest headaches up north."
Bryant assumed her position as chief executive officer of the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority permanently in January.
Prior to her appointment with the NRHA, Bryant had been working under contract with other rural RHAs in Manitoba as well as serving on the faculty at Brandon University School of Health Studies.
Gloria King became chief executive officer of the Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) when Marie O'Neill resigned March 14, 2008 after little more than a year on the job. King had joined the BRHA in 2003. She has lived in Northern Manitoba for 30 years.
O'Neill took a job in Winnipeg as associate deputy minister of primary care and healthy living at Manitoba Health. Prior to being hired by the BRHA, O'Neill had been the executive director of Rural and Northern Regional Support Services for Manitoba Health. Prior to December 2005, she was the director of primary health care for Manitoba Health.
O'Neill became chief executive officer in October 2006. She arrived in the wake of the BRHA being rocked by scandal the previous summer as the health authority's board of directors called for a management audit to be conducted. That audit led to her predecessor, Karen McClelland and two vice-presidents, Lloyd Martin and Rick Lees, being fired due to mismanagement within the organization. The audit discovered the provision of interest-free loans for vice-presidents, travel expenses going $200,000 over budget, and thousands spent on cigarettes.
King, who was vice-president of health services and chief nursing officer under O'Neill, became acting chief executive officer in March 2008 and was offered the job on a permanent basis by the BRHA's board of directors April 24, 2008, effective May 1, 2008.
Legislation to enable the reduction was introduced April 20 by Oswald, who said that the Regional Health Authorities Amendment Act would improve financial accountability and community involvement provisions.
"This legislation will help ensure an even more responsive RHA system," Oswald said at the time.
Among the provisions in the bill are tighter controls on executive compensation in regional health authorities, hospitals and other health corporations and measures to ensure that the expenses of chief executive officers for regional health authorities, hospitals and personal care homes would be posted online for public review. The legislation also restricts the rehiring of former senior executives in health authorities, hospitals and other health corporations and ensures that health organizations' financial surpluses from public funding will be used to provide health services.
To make the health authorities more responsive to the people and communities they serve, the government is creating new Local Health Involvement Groups and requiring regional health authorities to consult with patients and families in their region on community health assessments to identify the most pressing health needs of communities and develop regional health authority priorities.
"Merging RHAs will help direct health resources to support front-line care and is one component of the province's overall plan to protect quality care for families today and sustain the health-care system for tomorrow," said Oswald.
- with files from Jonathon Naylor at The Reminder in Flin Flon
