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The budget deficit at London Health Sciences Centre this year will climb to $78.1 million, $2 million more than projected, the treasurer of its board of directors said at an annual meeting on Wednesday.
John Leitch also told colleagues the hospital “in recent weeks” has started making moves to reduce the budget shortfall.
“The road ahead will be tough,” said David Musyj, who has newly arrived at the hospital as its acting chief executive amid significant upheaval in its senior ranks. “We will get through this together.”
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The hospital’s operational budget for 2024-25 is $1.6 billion, up from about $1.5 billion one year prior.
The budget deficit is about $30 million more than the shortfall last year.
The financial report presented on Wednesday is the first under Musyj, president and chief executive at Windsor Regional Hospital, who was named acting chief executive of LHSC in mid-May.
He came into the job with a reputation as a prudent fiscal manager, an executive not afraid to act and someone with close ties to the Ontario government, health-care sector observers said upon his arrival.
Musyj replaces Jackie Schleifer Taylor, who had been chief executive since 2021 and was on a leave of absence since 2023. Taylor is no longer employed at LHSC, the hospital announced earlier this month. The board of directors announced she should not continue in the role after the rising deficit and trips for senior executives totalling more than $470,000.
Schleifer Taylor made $803,584 in salary and taxable benefits in 2023, making her Ontario’s highest-paid hospital executive outside Toronto. Hospital officials have declined comment on Taylor’s severance package.
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Only on the job two years before she took a leave, Schleifer Taylor’s tenure was a stormy one. She left with the hospital facing the deficit, while it has 22 senior executives including three presidents on the payroll. It paid $1.5 million to five departed executives in 2021, and has signalled its intent to cancel a formal collaboration agreement with St. Joseph’s Health Care London.
LHSC has also been under investigation by Ontario’s Ministry of Health since November 2023 after it planned to send senior executives and staff on three trips.
A total of 22 executives travelled to Portugal and the United Arab Emirates last fall. The hospital cancelled a planned trip in November by 11 senior staff to Australia two days before they were supposed to depart after The London Free Press reported details of the first two trips.
Schleifer Taylor succeeded Paul Woods as chief executive after he was fired in 2021 amid blowback over his border-crossing travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Woods sued LHSC for $3.5 million over his dismissal and later reached a settlement with the hospital.
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