Performance-based pay increases given to top Interior Health (IH) brass amid a physician shortage crisis at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) are being criticized by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
“Taxpayers should be deeply concerned at the culture in Interior Health that’s allowing this to happen,” said Carson Binda, B.C.’s director with the CTF.
A shortage of physicians has already closed down the entire pediatric ward for at least six weeks and the maternity clinic is no longer accepting patients.
It’s a situation that doctors have publicly blamed on mismanagement by IH, saying the staffing model has been failing for years and has resulted in physician resignations.
In 2023, seven pediatricians quit working at the hospital, the same year that a number of top executives received those performance-based pay hikes.
Through public documents, Global News has learned that in most cases, the executives received a 6.7-per cent increase including Interior Health CEO Susan Brown.
Brown’s total compensation, with that pay increase, jumped to $472, 607.
One executive received a 12-per cent increase that year from a promotion.
“It’s unacceptable for bureaucrats to be taking big performance-based pay raises when the health care system they’re supposed to be overseeing is in free fall,” Binda said.
“If this were the private sector, pink slips would be raining down. Folks certainly wouldn’t be taking big performance-based pay raises.”
In an email to Global News, IH’s board chair, Dr. Robert Halpenny, stated, “Interior Health salary levels and benefits, including executive compensation, follow guidelines set by the Health Employers Association of BC. These province-wide frameworks are used across all health authorities and allow for performance-based adjustments that reflect organizational targets and responsibilities, not the circumstances of individual departments.”
The statement goes on to say, “In 2023, we added a total of 4,433 new frontline staff across a range of roles—843 full-time, 628 part-time, and 2,962 casual. We also continued to strengthen our physician workforce with 146 new doctors joining Interior Health that same year.”
Conservative MLA for Kelowna-Mission Gavin Dew also expressed concern over the pay raises.
‘Things are falling apart…and yet we are rewarding leadership for what looks to me like failure,” said Dew.
Dew. who, along with two other Conservative MLAs, met with Brown Thursday, is also raising questions whether current leadership can provide a fix given Brown is set to retire at the end of the year.
“I am not convinced that we’re going to be able to restore Interior Health to balance, to restore it to function without very serious change,” he said.
Dew suggested fast-tracking a leadership transition and urged B.C.’s health minister Josie Osborne to weigh in.
“The Minister of Health cannot keep sitting silent on this,” Dew said. “She has to make a decision. She has to act. We cannot afford to wait.”
Neither Osborne nor her ministry responded to Global’s request for comment.