Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare interim CEO Barry Monaghan destroyed whatever credibility he had as the lead administrator of our hospitals with news this week that he collected almost $500,000 in taxpayers’ money for essentially doing nothing.
Monaghan has gone on record reassuring residents that he will do his best to protect patient services and preserve local health care while balancing MAHC’s projected $5.8-million deficit.
It is clear, however, that he and his attitude of entitlement are the exact reason why Muskoka’s and so many other Ontario hospitals are on the brink of closure.
The levels of compensation awarded to Monaghan and other health care bureaucrats is bankrupting Ontario’s hospitals, and forcing rural communities like Muskoka to close hospital beds and cut front line staff like nurses and lab technicians.
At the LHINs, the story is no better. The networks and their high-priced executives think nothing of spending almost $300,000 on an eHealth contract, but fail to adequately inform the public of what advantage, if any, such work will provide.
What’s most offensive is the attitude that all of this is OK.
Monaghan makes no apologies for the fact that he collected $351,000 in salary after he left the Toronto Central LHIN (Local Health Integration Network). Nor does he appear to see anything wrong with taking a $104,000 untendered contract to set up “an umbrella organization” for the LHINs, as though the networks – the biggest, most wasteful and useless bureaucracy around – needed another layer of red tape.
Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller was bang on when he pointed out this misuse of funds last week in the Ontario legislature.
Miller noted that since 2006/2007, over $176 million has been taken away from patient care and put into health care salaries and administration.
He called for an end to the waste and a renewed focus on investing in patient care.
Why this simple, yet obvious solution seems to escape our current Liberal government is beyond us.
JL