Departed CEO made $603K, only worked 4 months for Manitoba Shared Health last year

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 monthsbefore his unexpected departure from the provincial health-care organization.

Adam Topp earned $603,604 in2023, 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 increasesto match the raises of unionized health-care staff.

Toppled Shared Healthfor less than four months in 2023beforethe organization described his departureas a "resignation" in a brief, two-sentence statement to media near the end of April. The announcement of his replacementLanette Siragusa, one of the public faces of Manitoba's COVID-19 responsewas made the next day.

Compared to the previous year, Topp's compensation in his final year on Shared Health's payroll grew by almost 83 per cent and was $272,865 higher in 2023than the nearly $331,000 he had earned in 2022. His compensationin 2023 is triple the amount ofManitoba Premier Wab Kinew.

The high payout suggests Toppreceived severance because he was fired,rather than the voluntary departureShared Health initially suggested, according to a University of Manitoba business instructorwho teaches a course on compensation.

Severance likely the result

"It would be difficult to imagine something other than they paid out the remaining term of the employment contract," Sean MacDonald said.

A Shared Health spokespersondeclined to comment on Topp's employment terms, describing it as a human resources matter.

MacDonaldsaid large severance payments to top executives cansparkpublic outrage, but he said these benefits are often embedded into the employment contracts.

"I don't think people should be immediately thinking that this is scandalous, simply because these are high numbers for the top executives."

MacDonaldsaid high compensation is needed to attract uppermanagers, andseveranceprotects them from the risk in assuming a job they could lose suddenly.

A union leader fighting for better wages for health-care support workers doesn't see it the same way, however.

"That's obscene, quite frankly, compared to thetwo and three [per cent pay increases]that the front-line workers have received" annually, saidShannon McAteer, health-care co-ordinator for the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Manitoba.

McAteer said she understands Topp may be entitled to severance, but she's still taken abackby how high it may have been.

Shared Health wouldn't disclose a breakdown of Topp's compensation and what resulted from his departure.

Topp, who led Shared Health for two years,is currently a partner in a health-care consultancy firm. He didn't respond to a request for comment through his business.

Under Manitoba's Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act, government entities must each year disclose the salary of every public sector employee making morethan $85,000. The total payincludes overtime, retirement/severance pay, lump sum payments, vacation payouts and benefits.

The recent compensation disclosure report for each of Manitoba's regional health authorities also shows some executivesearning tens of thousands more in 2023 than they did in 2022.

Some pay hikes for Shared Health management staff include a year-over-year increase from $205,000 to $265,000, $171,000 to $228,000 and$194,000 to $234,000. Their job titles stayed the same during this time, according to the disclosure reports.

While these documents don'toffer insight into what comprises each person's salary, Shared Health and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority saidretroactive pay increases contributed to thehigher earnings.

In 2023, non-unionized senior health-care officials received the samepercentage increasesand back paythat unionized health-care workers bargained for.

Same paybumps to executives

The health authorities saidthesepay bumps match the pattern established by theseven-year contracts reached by a number of health-care unions, which won total general wage increases of 9.6 per cent before compounding. Health-care employers were subsequently on the hook to pay out years of owed wages, totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, nurses received$216.7 million.

MacDonald, an instructor with U of M's Asper School of Business,said there's a general expectation that supervisors and managers be paid more than their employees, but he said in health care the jobs they're doing, and their relativeimportance, arevastly different.

He accepts the premise some health-care managers mayneed a pay bumpafter enduring a lengthywage freeze of their own, he said.

However, "we haveto accept that the administrators are not always going to get paid more than the patient care providers. And that's because their job isdeemed, the patient care providers, as more valuable."

MacDonaldsaid wages are understandably rising for some health-care professionals because ofhigh demand for these positions. Thesame cannot be said for executives, he said.

"You'd have to go case-by-case, but not all managers are deserving these raises."

Manitoba's NDP government has spoken repeatedly about its desire to cutadministration costs in health care and redirectmoney to the front lines.

Shared Health, an organizationcreated by the former PC governmentduring its overhaul of health care, initially bore the brunt of the party's pre-election criticism, but the NDP has since walked back that pledge by promising toreducebureaucratic costs in health care more generally but not singling out the one entity.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwarasaidthegovernment remains committed to spending less on administration.

"Heather Stefanson's government gave big payouts to executives while patients faced longer wait times and health-care staff went years without contracts. We've tasked Shared Health with righting their fiscal ship, reduce their bureaucracy and todirect resources back to patients and the front lines of care," Asagwarasaid in a statement.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation warned the compensationreports showthe province heading in the wrong direction.

"If the government wants to actually fix health care and get more people treated and cured, it becomes difficult when they want to spend all of this money on executives and high-level bureaucrats that aren't actually doing that curing," said Gage Haubrich, Prairie director for the organization.

In May, Shared Health cut around 24 non-union administrative positions. It said at the time the money would be reinvested into supporting clinical teams and delivering patient care.

Shared Health's former CEO pocketed $603K in 2023 after 4 months of work

30 days ago

Duration 2:13

The former head of Manitoba Shared Health worked for only four months in 2023, but was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the previous year. A business expert says big severance payouts are part of the cost of doing business with top executives.