Providence Health CEO brings along decades of experience in Britain
False Creek Flats hospital project will be major priority for new executive
Fiona Dalton, a British hospital executive with a good grasp of publicly funded medical systems, will move into the St. Paul’s Hospital executive suite in April, just around the one-year anniversary of a record-setting, $75-million pledge from Jimmy Pattison for the new hospital.
The False Creek Flats hospital redevelopment will likely consume much of Dalton’s time. The many-years-in-the-making business plan for the $1.2-billion project was finally submitted to the government last month.
Dalton is moving to Vancouver from Southampton, England, the city most famously known as the port from which the Titanic started its ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912. She succeeds Dianne Doyle as president/CEO of Providence Health Care, a pioneering Catholic-based group with 16 healthcare sites. It has its own board, but partners with both Vancouver Coastal Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority.
Doyle, a former nurse, will retire in April; she was in the leadership role for 12 years. Doyle most recently earned just over $350,000 in salary and benefits, and it’s expected Dalton will be paid the same.
Dalton has 23 years of experience in the health-care administration field. Most recently, she was CEO of the National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust for University Hospital Southampton. The NHS hospital reportedly has 10,000 employees and an annual budget of £680 million ($1.2 billion). By comparison, Providence has about 7,000 staff, including 1,100 doctors, and a budget of $800 million.
Dalton has an undergraduate degree (BA honours, human sciences) from Queen’s College at Oxford University. She previously worked at other NHS medical centres, including Great Ormond Street Hospital and Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals.
Dalton couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, as she is reportedly travelling back to Britain after house-hunting and attending meetings in Vancouver. Health Minister Adrian Dix said Monday that he hasn’t yet met Dalton, but noted his mother, who lives in Vancouver, coincidentally grew up in Southampton.
Dix said while it may not seem like much progress has been made on the hospital redevelopment project, “in fact, an enormous amount of work has been done.” He credits Dr. Penny Ballem for expeditiously moving the plan forward. Ballem, the former City of Vancouver manager and a former deputy minister of health, was appointed last fall to work on the business-case plan with Providence. “Her contract ended on Jan. 31, but she was so extraordinarily helpful that I expect she may come back to help us again,” Dix said.
Dix said he couldn’t commit to definite cabinet and treasury board approval of the business plan in 2018. That approval is crucial because once it occurs, the project goes through a tendering process, bringing the redevelopment closer to the construction phase. It’s not known whether the project will be built by an oft-touted 2023-24 date.
“There’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done on costs and scope, but I would say that since we formed the government (last fall) we’ve made more progress on the redevelopment plan than the previous government did in decades,” said Dix. He wouldn’t say if the $500-million commitment to the project by the former Liberal government will be increased substantially. “That was the amount they committed to in 2011,” he noted.
Maureen Chant, Pattison’s executive assistant who stickhandled the donation, wouldn’t comment on the planning process, but it’s believed the Pattison donation doesn’t actually flow until construction begins. In an interview last fall, Dix assured skeptics that St. Paul’s is a top priority.
Meanwhile, a memo circulated to St. Paul’s staff a few weeks ago reveals that Paul Landry, the project manager who was hired in 2016, has resigned. He’ll be replaced by staff — including Eleanor Lee — of the Provincial Health Services Authority, who led the impressive redevelopment of the new Teck Acute Care Centre at B.C. Children’s and Women’s Hospital.