I have to hand it to them, one thing that Northern Health does really well is compensate their employees. Especially their president and chief executive officer Cathy Ulrich who is paid $300,000 per year to head the organization.
Northern Health’s highest paid employees and their salaries and expenses are publicly listed on their website. Since the late 1980s, B.C.’s Financial Information Act has required provincial and municipal government agencies to disclose the total remuneration of anyone earning more than $75,000 a year which is also something our local governments should look at doing.
The top earner on the Northern Health list is Ulrich.
So what does she do for her $300,000 plus salary every year?
According to Northern Health, Ulrich and her team of executives develop operational plans, prepare budget plans, approve consistent regional standards and approve regional policies for the organization.
She must also travel fairly consistently to clock up over $30,000 in expenses during one year. That, to some is one years wage.
April Hughes, Northern Health’s health services administrator for our region also pocketed $131,012, not including expenses for her work last year.
In a statement made by Ulrich, on the Northern Health website she says, “We work hard to deliver quality services designed for people who live in the North.”
Quality services?
She must certainly not be including Burns Lake in this statement?
Maybe we have been overlooked somewhere along the line, because we currently have a hospital that is crumbling down around the ears of the very few physicians that we have remaining. A hospital that is actually operating as a glorified health clinic. No maternity services, no operating room and now no emergency room ..... yet Ulrich seems to believe that quality services are being delivered to ‘the people who live in the North.’
I have to wonder if Ulrich has been to Burns Lake recently, I know April Hughes certainly has. Surely a trip to our hospital must be very a sobering experience on the ‘quality services’ that we in the North are receiving, so why are things not improving?
Sure the plans for a new hospital are now completed but the government is asking the local area to come up with 40 per cent [approximately $20 million] of the cost of the new hospital .
That is a big task for a small community. We all need to pay taxes to pay for public infrastructure, services, education, health care, roads ..... but not to pay for ever increasing public sector salaries such as Hughes’ and Ulrich’s.
It seems a little unfair to me that we continually go without health services while Northern Health executive salaries increase year after year. Maybe it’s time for a salary freeze while we sort out our hospital problem .
I hope that Northern Health work to improve the services available, not just in Burns Lake but the entire North.