Alberta removes AHS chief from her post

EDMONTON – Another leader has left as head of Alberta Health Services – Athana Mentzelopoulos (pictured), hired just over a year ago, is out as president and CEO. An interim leader is now in place. It’s the latest departure for AHS, which has several people in the top job over the last three years.

Deputy health minister Andre Tremblay was appointed to step in on an interim basis, the provincial government announced.

Health minister Adriana LaGrange thanked Mentzelopoulos for “strong leadership” and wished her well in her future endeavours.

“(Mentzelopoulos) has been a strong leader, but we’re getting into a really critical stage of refocusing, and we feel right now that Tremblay, my deputy minister, is going to be the right person to lead that next stage (of the) very complex work that we’re doing on the refocusing, and we just want to make sure that that keeps going forward,” LaGrange told Post Media.

Alberta is reshaping AHS by forging ahead with a controversial transformation of the health system into four “pillars”. AHS is to be focused on hospital-based services, answering to Acute Care Alberta – one of the four new pillars. Three other agencies will specialize in mental health and addiction, primary care, and continuing care.

Lately, the leadership role at AHS has been something of a revolving door. Verna Yiu was ousted as AHS leader in April 2022, after a lengthy tenure. Mauro Chies had a brief stint in the position. Then Sean Chilton took over for a month, in an acting capacity, before Athana Mentzelopoulos was hired in December 2023.

The turmoil at the top hit a fever pitch in late 2022, when Premier Danielle Smith fired the AHS board and appointed John Cowell as official administrator. He, too, is gone.

The frequent leadership changes are proving costly for Alberta. AHS compensation disclosures reveal Yiu’s termination resulted in $660,000 in severance pay and Chies was entitled to nearly $1.4 million.

Mentzelopoulos is not listed on the so-called sunshine list but a four-year AHS contract, published online, reveals her base salary was $583,443 per year.

Depending on the timing and circumstances of her departure — and if she was terminated without just cause — she could be entitled to one year’s salary in severance.

“This is paying someone for not doing something. So, I think to the average Albertan this is going to be problematic,” said Lorian Hardcastle, an associate professor in the law faculty and Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

“It is a significant amount of money. If you think about what you might have gotten for that money in terms of family doctor visits or blood tests run at labs, it’s very significant. A lot of small ticket items can be provided for what we’re paying in severance.”

“It’s not good to have all this instability in the health system,” said Dr. Braden Manns, a professor of health economics at the University of Calgary and former interim vice-president at AHS. Manns was surprised by the timing of the latest departure.

“There’s going to be a huge transition happening as this government carves out the integrated healthcare system into four parts. So, one might have thought that it would have made sense to maintain some consistent leadership through that transition,” he said.

“But certainly, a CEO leaving … literally months before an expected transition, suggests that there was trouble in paradise.”