LHSC names presidents for its three hospitals amongst government shakeup – The London Free Press

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London Health Sciences Centre has appointed three new presidents and three other top-ranking executives, the latest move in a major shakeup of the hospital’s highest ranks.

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Nash Syed, LHSC’s interim vice-president of clinical programs, is taking the helm of Children’s Hospital, while interim chief clinical officer Cathy Vandersluis will become president of University Hospital.

Deborah Wiseman, the chief nursing executive at the Huron Perth Health Care Alliance, will become president of Victoria Hospital in the fall.

“While we are one team unified around our common mission, University, Victoria and Children’s hospitals each have a unique identity with individual strengths and opportunities,” the hospital said in a statement Tuesday.

“Each president will work collaboratively with staff and executive and physician leaders to strengthen our mission of care, teaching and research.”

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While the Victoria and University presidents are new positions, the role at Children’s Hospital is not. Jackie Schleifer Taylor served as its president before becoming LHSC president and chief executive after Paul Woods was fired in January 2021 amid revelations he had travelled internationally during the pandemic.

Additional memos to staff Tuesday, copies of which were reviewed by The Free Press, named Abhi Mukherjee, a deputy chief financial officer at the Ottawa Hospital, as LHSC’s new chief financial officer and CJ Curran, a senior director at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, the new corporate health disciplines executive.

John French, an executive director of imaging with Manitoba’s health system administration, has been named LHSC’s new clinical diagnostics executive, a joint appointment with St. Joseph’s Health Care London.

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All three will join LHSC in September, the memos said.

Tuesday’s announcements are the latest churn in LHSC’s top ranks in the last 18 months.

LHSC revealed two new appointments to its leadership team on June 30: a corporate hospital administration executive and a human resources and workplace wellness executive. The corporate hospital administrator will oversee the presidents of Children’s, Victoria and University hospitals.

At the time, LHSC said it was aggressively restructuring its top ranks to be smaller, tighter and more responsive to challenges coming out of the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The June 30 appointments came on the heels of the departure of two high-profile executives at the hospital, vice-president and chief clinical officer Carol Young-Ritchie and Glen Kearns, diagnostic services vice-president and chief information officer.

Five other LHSC executives left or were terminated in the first six months of 2021, including Woods, the chief operating officer and the general counsel.

The five received a combined $1.48 million in salary and about $49,000 in benefits in 2021, provincial public sector salary disclosures show, despite parting ways with LHSC in the first half of the year.

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