The former CEO of Shared Health saw his pay exceed $600,000 last year — a nearly 83 per cent increase from the prior year — despite only working for four months before his unexpected departure from the provincial health-care organization.
Adam Topp earned $603,604 in 2023, according to recent compensation disclosures.
The same documents reveal some executives also claimed in the range of $30,000 to $60,000 in extra compensation, attributed at least partially to them collecting retroactive pay increases to match the raises of unionized health-care staff.
Topp led Shared Health for less than four months in 2023 before the organization described his departure as a “resignation” in a brief, two-sentence statement to media near the end of April. The announcement of his replacement — Lanette Siragusa, one of the public faces of Manitoba’s COVID-19 response — was made the next day.
The article says it was the result of a retroactive salary adjustment coupled with severance pay - unfortunate, but I’m not sure it’s an egregious example of mismanagement (besides him apparently being a bad hire - I wish we knew more about why he was let go).
There’s a lot of argument to be had over the relative value of CEOs across the board, but Shared Health presumably has to offer a salary that’s competitive with the private sector.
I’ve yet to get half a million in severance and I’m actually fucking good at my job.
That’s always the excuse, including shitty hires like this one.
It’s a load of crap no matter which way you look at it.
So assuming cutting the salaries of all executives everywhere is off the table, what’s the solution?
First off I’d like to be able to access ALL the financials, broken down, of Shared Health … because as of right now the province only publically releases a generalized budget.
Based on what those numbers show it’s time for a serious rejigging of the system. I know physicians hate the way it works now, ie: the amount of paperwork that takes away from time that could be spent with patients, etc etc.
And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find the waste in that behemoth is atrocious, money that should be spent on heathcare itself vs a bureaucracy.
Hire f/t nurses instead of ‘forcing’ them to work 2-3 p/t positions. Stop the games that have carried over from Pallister’s regime.
There’s a lot that could be done. It just seems nothing gets touched because it’s a BIG job to overhaul the pile of shit left over from the Cons.
I don’t disagree with any of that - any governmental body should be scrutinized periodically, and as I mentioned, I’d love to see some information about why this guy was let go.