CKHA supervisor now focusing on governance

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Rob Devitt (Aaron Hall)

After completely overhauling the senior leadership team, the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance’s provincially-appointed supervisor is now shifting his attention and focus onto the hospital’s governance structure.

Rob Devitt said he did not want the newly hired President and CEO of the CKHA Lori Marshall to be interfered with by the board.

“This allows me now to sort of go up 10,000 feet and start to really focus on corporate structure, governance structure and hopefully, once that is done, we’ll deal with board recruitment, board selection, board training etc. and let Lori, and the very capable team that has been recruited, deal with operations,” Devitt said during a recent update with the local media.

Devitt said this is going to be getting started on April 1.

After a review of its internal controls, Devitt said some fundamentals of governance were missing with the CKHA.

“We have already read the investigators report which talks about how all the boards that create the Alliance were complicit in the financial demise or difficulties,” he said.

“So obviously I look at that and I say ‘well the governance structure that got us here, is clearly one we do not want to replicate, so we have got to come up with something new.’ I don’t know exactly what that will look like yet but I think it should be fairly straight forward to figure out a structure that will ensure that we never get back into that situation again.”

Three different former board models

Devitt said all hospital boards in Ontario are elected by the corporations members.

The question is how do the people that do the electing get determined.

“Interestingly in Chatham-Kent we have three different models of board election,” Devitt said.

“We have St.Joseph’s where the board members are ultimately elected or appointed through the St. Joseph’s Corporation and through the Health Care Society in London. That is one model.”

“We have the Sydenham model, where citizens pay a fee and in turn for the fee they get to vote at an annual meeting and that is one that some people say is democratic. I would suggest to you, you may recall about a year and a half ago we had a federal election, I don’t recall having to pay to vote. Maybe they did down here but certainly in my community they didn’t pay to get a ballot. So I am not sure it is really democratic. I call it a paid membership model.”

Devitt said the other model is the one used at Public General, where the members of the corporation were the members of the board, and they could elect new board members.

“This has been widely studied in Ontario already, previous supervisors have studied and dealt with it,” Devitt said, adding that the provincial auditor has also looked at this and offered an opinion on the best structure.

“What I like about the provincial auditor is the auditor is not political. They are not on the blue team the red team, they are not on the orange team. The auditor is an Office of Parliament, they are completely nonpartisan.”

No new plan in place

Devitt said he has not decided on a structure at this point.

“I don’t think it’s binomial. I don’t think it is black and white. It is not paid versus just skills based,” he said.

“There are some hybrids in there as well and I need to do a little more analysis to figure out what the best approach is. Part of that analysis is we have reached out to every hospital in Southwestern Ontario to look at their model and I can tell you the model here is one of a kind, which I think raises a good question. That is something we will have to deal with but you can’t deal with that until I have figured out the corporate structure.”

Devitt added: “You have three corporations sharing two building and if people are aligned to the interest of their building, rather that the interest of the whole and a system, is it little wonder that we didn’t have a falling out. So one of the things I am now starting to think about is how do we create a structure that guarantees that our successors look at what is good for the whole premise on their being two sites, as opposed to some look after site A, some look after half of site B, and the others look after the other half of site B. So that is the piece I have to figure out.”

Ken Deane, who stepped in as the interim CEO of the CKHA for seven months, said he does not think being democratic is the proper characteristic to describe a successful hospital board.

“I look at what we are doing here as an example of contemporary governance practices, even though there is a single board member,” he said.

“It’s measured by our transparency. Our 60 day media updates, in my view, represent what a contemporary board needs to do. Our connection with staff and our transparency in communications with our front line staff and all of our staff is another measure of a contemporary organization.”

Deane added: “So I don’t think the argument or discussion is around democratic as I don’t know how that term applies here. It’s around organizations that apply temporary management in communications practices that focus on a healthy work place, that focus on culture, that focus on quality of patient care, that focus on fiduciary duty underpinned by values. So for me that should be the discussion.”

Here is some more of our recent coverage of the hospital:

CKHA open house held in Wallaceburg

CKHA moving forward with two campuses, two ER’s

Gaps and opportunities revealed in CKHA audit


– Photo credit: Aaron Hall

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