I know this story is several months old now, but it isn’t too late to talk about it. St. Joseph’s Hospital and London Health Sciences Centre embarked on restructuring the hospital system here a long time ago and both hospitals say they are very well “integrated” now. Cliff Nordal, the current CEO of both hospitals, had a significant role in this restructuring.

Cliff Nordal is retiring, and good for him. Why wouldn’t he? He took in almost $800,000 in salary and benefits last year! Considering he’s been the CEO of St. Joseph’s for over 20 years, I’m sure he’s got a very comfortable nest egg to retire on.

Then the debate began: should LHSC and St. Joe’s continue under one CEO or go back to two? Well, St. Joe’s decided they wanted to go back to having their own CEO because “St. Joseph’s remains a health-care centre with a mandate based on Catholic values.”

I thought this was an interesting argument for a publicly funded organization. While some of the folks over at the blog of AM980′s Nathan Smith (a very well written blog entry at that) pointed out that Catholic-funded schools obviously promote “Catholic values,” they are also required to teach a provincially mandated curriculum. Don’t think for a second the potential similarities haven’t crossed my mind!

What I find most interesting is the “Catholic values” they want to promote, and the experiences friends of mine have had at the hands of the practitioners at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

So, exactly what “values” are the staff so concerned about protecting and promoting that patients can’t get elsewhere?

• The Catholic Church is anti-contraception. Given the seemingly rampant increase in sexually transmitted infections being seen in seniors engaging in promiscuous sex, would St. Joseph’s Hospital staff still promote the use of condoms?
• Gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Would overweight/obese patients be treated differently, given staff may believe the patient is going to Hell? (Yes, it makes me laugh a little every time I see an overweight Catholic)
• Greed is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Would very wealthy patients be given the cold shoulder because they spent their lives pursuing wealth? After all they’re going to Hell too, aren’t they?
• What about members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities? I can only imagine what treatment they might receive!

Publicly funded healthcare institutions should adhere to the Canada Health Act and be done with it. Promoting Catholic “values” is irrelevant to providing good diagnostics, treatment and bedside manners. Leave your personal beliefs at home, stop costing taxpayers more than needs to be expensed (e.g. hire a single CEO to replace Mr. Nordal) and get on with providing the healthcare patients so badly need!

I want my $451,000 back. That’s right, every single penny of severance that was recently afforded to Diane Beattie after the LHSC Board of Directors forced her to resign.

When a scandal like this one breaks out, there is no reason whatsoever that such gross misconduct should result in such a comfortable severance. $451,000 is almost two years worth of Ms. Beattie’s annual pay ($250,000 – not bad, huh?).

This entire issue has been handled very poorly. The audit outing the $3.3 million untendered contract was produced 2 years ago, yet the public wasn’t made aware of it. Her friend Kelly Butt telling the London Free Press that what she did was right in the business world. That’s a load of bull seeing as the LHSC doesn’t belong to the normal business world – it’s a world where taxpayers foot the bill in an era where we very rarely see tax decreases even when promised… and those decreases usually lead to increases somewhere else.

Not to mention that if a CIO were caught mishandling $3.3 million at any other company when it can be proven someone else could do the work for cheaper, you can bet your ass they would be fired with no severance whatsoever. It’s gross misconduct and breaks every due diligence rule in the book. Why the LHSC Board of Directors didn’t just throw her out on her butt is beyond me.

I really like the way the Autopro at Wharncliffe & Riverside put it:

“Break Company Rules
Get $451000
Where Do I Sign Up?”

Indeed! Maybe it’s time we replaced the entire LHSC Board of Directors and C-level executives? If they’d like to keep their positions, I urge the Board to begin including all tenders, bidders (along with proposals) and winners into the annual report. It’s my hard earned money they’re spending and I have a right to know where it’s going and how it got there.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government really, really needs to clean up it’s act. This week was the first time I agreed with something Andrea Horwath and that, to me, is not a good thing. Lastly, CEO Cliff Nordal, stop looking for the source of the leak. They did the right thing and exposed something very, very serious. You’re only making yourself look like a jerk and that’s the last thing you need. If I were on the Board of Directors, I’d be asking for your head on a silver platter.