More turmoil in Alberta Health Services as latest president and CEO departs
CBC
Alberta Health Services — which the province is dismantling as it forges ahead with its full-scale and controversial overhaul of the health system — is facing even more uncertainty as yet another leader departs.
Athana Mentzelopoulos, hired just over a year ago, is out as president and CEO. An interim leader is now in place.
It's the latest departure for AHS, which has seen a revolving door of people in the top job over the last three years.
"It''s not good to have all this instability in the health system," said Dr. Braden Manns, a professor of health economics at the University of Calgary and former interim vice-president at AHS.
Verna Yiu was ousted in April 2022, after a lengthy tenure. Mauro Chies had a brief stint in the position. Then Sean Chilton took over for a month, in an acting capacity, before Athana Mentzelopoulos was hired in December 2023.
Deputy minister Andre Tremblay was appointed this week to step in on an interim basis, the provincial government announced on Wednesday.
The turmoil at the top hit a fever pitch in late 2022, when Premier Danielle Smith fired the AHS board and appointed John Cowell as official administrator. He, too, is gone.
Manns was surprised by the timing of the latest departure.
"There's going to be a huge transition happening as this government carves out the integrated health-care system into four parts. So one might have thought that it would have made sense to maintain some consistent leadership through that transition," he said.
"But certainly a CEO leaving … literally months before an expected transition, suggests that there was trouble in paradise."
The Alberta government is in the process of completely restructuring health care in the province and creating four new health-care delivery organizations.
AHS will be relegated to the role of hospital service provider, answering to Acute Care Alberta — one of the four new pillars — once it's up and running
NDP health critic Sarah Hoffman said the United Conservative Party government is causing chaos.
"They're really keen on firing and hiring CEOs when all Albertans want are more nurses, family doctors and less wait for important surgeries," she said.
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