Search begins for new CEO of Nova Scotia Health

HALIFAX – The contract for the interim CEO of Nova Scotia Health, Karen Oldfield (pictured), will be extended on an interim basis while a search for her replacement is conducted.

Oldfield has been on a combination of vacation and unpaid leave since last month. Health minister Michelle Thompson confirmed to reporters that Oldfield would stick around “for the next foreseeable bit” while a search for a new CEO is conducted.

Thompson said she expected the process to take “several months.”

The minister didn’t have many details about what the search process would look like or the criteria that would be included in the job description. She also declined to say whether she thought the next CEO should have a background in healthcare.

“I don’t think we want to predetermine, necessarily, what people’s experiences have been.”

Thompson and premier Tim Houston installed Oldfield as interim CEO – a tag she has continued to retain – shortly after they formed government in 2021, as part of a process that saw them fire the sitting CEO and health authority board.

Although the minister had previously been mum about Oldfield’s future when asked by reporters, earlier this month she confirmed that the government has no plans at this time to put a board back in place for the health authority.

Oldfield, a lawyer by trade with no professional healthcare background, had previously worked as the CEO of the Port of Halifax for 17 years and as chief of staff to former premier John Hamm before that.

Thompson said she has no regrets about appointing Oldfield without a search or selecting someone without a medical background to helm the health authority.

“This has been a time of transformation and agility in the healthcare system — a lot of investment, a lot of change in a short period of time — and we needed a formidable leader to be able to help us with that and certainly that’s what Karen has delivered.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said the next CEO needs to be someone with healthcare credentials.

Chender told reporters that the health authority also needs to go back to being an independent, arms-length body “that appropriately runs a non-partisan healthcare system.”

“That means we have a permanent CEO who is not a Tory partisan that reports directly to the premier, that means a functional board.”

Interim Liberal Leader Iain Rankin said “it’s a bit of a joke” that Oldfield has retained the interim tag, considering how long she’s been in the job.

Rankin told reporters that having a partisan appointment in such an important job reduces the ability for evidence-based decision making.

In January, Oldfield told MLAs on a legislative committee that the province could no longer afford to “keep spending uncontrollably on health care.”

The government’s 2026-27 budget, tabled last month, increases spending for the Health Department by 12.3 per cent.