Hospital president and CEO stepping down after five years at helm

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre CEO Andree Robichaud has tendered her resignation.

A teary-eyed Robichaud made the announcement Wednesday, saying she’ll officially leave the job she’s held for the past five years in mid-June.

She’ll also step down as acting CEO of the Thunder Bay Regional Regional Research Insititute, leaving for greener pastures in the Toronto area where Robichaud will assume the role of president and CEO of the Rouge Valley Health System.

Hospital officials say they’re hoping to have an interim CEO in place as early as next week, indicating they’re already in discussions with an unnamed candidate. A permanent replacement is expected to take at least six months to put in place.

Robichaud says she’ll depart with mixed emotions.

“I’m excited about the prospect of moving to a new challenge, but I’m saddened that I’ll be leaving this community, the friends I’ve made here and this hospital,” Robichaud said, reading from a prepared speech.

Robichaud said she leaves with her head held high, despite a rash of recent departures in upper management and rumours of staff dissension and dissatisfaction in the ranks.

“As a CEO you have to make very hard decisions and sometimes people are happy and sometimes people are not happy,” Robichaud said.

“But I can tell you I’m not leaving because I’m not happy. I’m really leaving because I have a new challenge in front of me and the timing is good.”

Robichaud, who helped set the table for the next five years at Thunder Bay Regional, overseeng a new strategic plan, said her biggest accomplishment at the helm has been to make the facility a true community hospital.

“This institution really belongs to the community and I think the community feels that now,” she said,  noting they consulted with 350 people on their last strategic plan and hope to increase that number to 750 this time around.

“They feel they are part of the process and they have a say in the direction this community should take. I think that’s probably my biggest accomplishment.”

Her biggest regret is not delivering cardio-vascular surgery to Thunder Bay – at least not yet.

“I have four months left and I’m going to give it my darndest,” Robichaud said. “I’d like to have no deficit. There’s a lot of things, but it’s a difficult industry and I think I gave my 300 per cent.”

Earlier this year hospital officials revealed the Health Sciences Centre was operating at about a $5-million deficit.

Robichaud also wasn’t able to solve the problem of gridlock, which has plagued the hospital off and on for years.

It’s not just a Thunder Bay problem, she said.

“It’s a community problem, it’s a partnership program and the partners in Northwestern Ontario made a very good pitch to the minister last year when (Deb Matthews) came to announce the $14 million. They recognized that we were different.”

Robichaud, who took over from inaugural president and CEO Ron Saddington in 2010, said community capacity is an issue that must be addressed.

“The Local Health Integration Network has put together a plan together that addresses that problem. Now if government can approve that plan, the over-capacity in the next 12 to 14 months could be a thing of the past for Thunder Bay Regional.”

Susan Fraser, chairwoman of the hospital’s board of directors, said finding a replacement isn’t a process they plan to rush.

“We are meeting this evening, in fact, to put the wheels in motion to start that search,” Fraser said. “There will be a committee struck which will include a variety of representatives from the board, NOSM, a number of groups. So that’s where we’re starting.”