The head of two major city hospitals has been sacked just 16 months into a five-year contract for a failure to “collaborate”. Central Adelaide Local Health Network chief executive Julia Squire was scheduled to return from personal leave on Tuesday but will instead permanently leave the service after she was dismissed by SA Health chief executive Vickie Kaminski. Ms Kaminski said she’d decided Ms Squire’s future on Monday night, a comment derided as “nonsense” by Transforming Health critic Warren Jones, who said the decision had been made two weeks ago. She said SA Health deputy chief executive Len Richards would continue to act as CALHN chief executive, and bring the consultative approach it needed. “Looking what we need to do over the next short while as we get ready to transition into the new RAH, we really need somebody with a more collaborative, more consultative style and that’s what we think Len Richards brings to the role in the interim,” she said. “What we need to do is to give people an opportunity to feel included in the decisions — if people plan the battle they don’t battle the plan — so we have to have them involved and looking at what it is that we’re going to be doing in the new RAH, how we’re going to be looking after patients.” CALHN takes in the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Queen Adelaide Hospital. It’s unclear how much Ms Squire will be paid out but Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said he understood it would be in excess of $300,000.
