It’s a question which may not ever be fully answered — did she take the plunge herself, or was she pushed out as the Chief Executive of Interior Health.

In a statement issued Friday morning, the Interior Health board of directors confirmed that Susan Brown is no longer the President and CEO of the organization.

While it was made clear she was no longer in charge of the day-to-day operations, the statement did leave a number of open questions, including what exactly drove the move.

“Interior Health (IH) remains committed to reopening the Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) pediatric in-patient unit as soon as possible,” began the statement released publicly on Friday morning.  “We are pleased to announce four new physicians have signed offers to join the department.”

“However, at this time, IH does not have the required number of pediatricians available to safely re-open the 10-bed inpatient unit,” added the Health Authority.  “We continue to work towards resuming services and will provide timely updates to the community.”

From there, the statement lists four steps the Interior Health board of directors, the senior executives and a group representing the medical professionals had come up with to try to clear the path toward reopening the pediatric ward at Kelowna General.

• Continued collaboration with the medical staff association and Doctors of BC through an established joint action committee to develop a comprehensive plan to address the staffing challenges and stabilize services over the long term
• Appointing a neutral, third-party facilitator as soon as possible to make recommendations to the IH board of directors on further actions to support strengthening pediatric services at KGH.
• Susan Brown is concluding her tenure as president & chief executive officer (CEO) and will now focus on supporting the organization in its transition in advance of her pending retirement, as announced last spring.
• Sylvia Weir, the current chief financial officer (CFO) and vice president of corporate services has been appointed interim president & CEO.

In making the move, the Interior Health board also made it clear that Brown has not been terminated from her position.

“On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to Susan Brown for her unwavering commitment and service to Interior Health and the health and well-being of the communities we serve during the particularly challenging times of COVID-19 and a global health care worker shortage,” said Dr. Robert Halpenny, Interior Health board chair.

“The board thanks Susan for her continued support to Interior Health and availability to advance the leadership transition plan as her successor is identified.”

Brown had already announced her intention to resign as the President and CEO, but with the intention of staying on until the end of the year.

The Interior Health board at its June 18th meeting did confirm a professional recruitment effort had been launched for Browns’ replacement.

Downfall follows defiant pushback by CEO days earlier

Friday’s revelation came a little more than a week after an op-ed was posted on the Interior Health website credited to Brown.

In the statement dated June 16th, Brown proclaimed that she had the full backing of both the Interior Health’s board and BC’s Health Minister.

“Late last week, I was pleased to have the full support of my Chair, Dr. Robert Halpenny, the Interior Health Board, and the Honorable Josie Osborne, the Minister of Health,” stated Brown.

The statement would go on to suggest she intended to stay in her role to see the Health Authority through to the reopening of the pediatric ward in Kelowna, while also alluding to “unproductive” elements within the organization.

“My team and I have participated in dozens of meetings to listen to leaders and physicians at KGH to better understand the issues that resulted in the difficult decision to temporarily change pediatric services,” stated Brown in her June 16th op-ed.

“I have heard some concerns about culture in the Emergency and Pediatrics Departments and I share those concerns,” she added.

“I’ve also seen behavior that is unproductive and not in alignment with the values of IH – quality, integrity, compassion and safety.”

Her statement would also seemingly take issue with those who went public with concerns they had.

“Some of the issues raised recently are related to physician compensation models and service deliverables,” stated Brown.  “These are matters negotiated between the Ministry of Health and Doctors of BC, and they are not within the operational responsibilities of health authorities like IH.”

“These discussions rightly belong at the bargaining table, not in public forums or media,” she added, while also suggesting that what was being portrayed in the media was not indicative of the reality of the situation.

“I continue to hear sensationalized misinformation in the media and beyond, but I want our community to know that KGH is, and continues to be, a priority for me and IH,” said Brown.

Local officials left frustrated

While the shutdown of the pediatric ward at Kelowna General may have been the tipping point for Brown’s continued leadership, a perceived unwillingness — correct or incorrect — by Interior Health to want to change the status quo has been an undercurrent of frustration among local leaders as part of Brown’s seven-year tenure as CEO and President, but also before her tenure in 2018.

Among those who has been pressing for an updated strategy is a group of smaller community mayors.

The group, which includes local leaders from various communities impacted by emergency room closures, banded together following the 2024 Union of BC Municipalities convention to try to end the ER shutdowns that continue to haunt their various communities.

“We met with [Health] Minister Osbourne a month-and-a-half, two months ago and one of the things on the list was an extensive review of all HA’s [Health Authorities] across the province,” Merritt mayor Mike Goetz told Radio NL as part of a conversation following Brown’s departure as CEO.  “Having a look at what’s working, where the hold-ups are and [review] possible replacements of Presidents and CEOs to get us on track.”

“Basically, we were all kind of stuck in the same situation, especially in Interior Health where we were all having the same issues,” added Goetz.

Goetz says he’s hopeful a shake-up at the top of Interior Health can lead to some changes, noting the struggles he faced through much of last year when the Nicola Valley Hospital in Merritt was shutting down twice or three times a week at some points, generally for 12 or 13 hour stretches at a time.

“Some of the issues I dealt with through my [municipal] directors to get some of them fixed,” said Goetz.  “But it kind of felt like…if it wasn’t for the people that were in the trenches talking to you, the higher-ups didn’t really want to seem to move on things too much.”

“It was very hard to get a hold of Ms. Brown,” added Goetz.

Another political figure in the region who has also been critical of Brown and the Interior Health administration is Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew.

The first-term BC Conservative has been spearheading a push to have the pediatric ward at Kelowna General reopened, while also taking aim at both the Minister of Health in Victoria and the Interior Health leadership in Kelowna.

Dew says his conversations with front-line medical staff at KGH has convinced him there’s a level of fear among staff to say anything, suggesting the staff at the hospital are worried about losing their jobs if they speak up.

“You don’t get doctors writing letters to the public and calling their MLAs if the system for internal feedback is working properly,” Dew said. “It’s clear there is a broken culture, not only in Interior Health, but more broadly in the healthcare system.”

Dew suggests if the current work environment in Kelowna General and the broader Interior Health Region is going to improve, there needs to be a restoration of trust.

“The starting point has to be rebuilding the relationship, reopening communication between the doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, and a corporate leadership that has been out of touch,” Dew said.

Fundamental changes recommended

“They say a change is just as good as a rest… and hopefully an ability to work with the smaller communities and smaller cities will come into play,” said Mike Goetz.

While it was the problems within Kelowna which appears to have shaken up the Interior Health board to take Friday’s action at the top of the Interior Health management structure, the underlying issues which threaten smaller communities in the Health Authority have not disappeared.

Those issues boil down to finding and being able to keep medical professionals onboard in smaller communities in BC.

Emergency room closures in Goetz’s community of Merritt have died down this year, as have the string of ER closures the North Thompson community of Clearwater also dealt with through 2023.

In Clearwater’s case, a localized incentive program to keep nurses and other health care professionals in that community from fleeing has kept the local ER’s lights on — save for a few unexpected shutdowns — for most of 2025.

At the same time, all communities in Interior Health have been put under a Victoria-backed incentive program which provides cash bonuses to those who sign on in rural or remote areas.

It was put in place in 2024 to try to deal with the lingering staff shortcomings and was only expected to be a short-term program.

That program had been scheduled to shut down in March of this year but was extended by the province into this summer, with the new deadline for closing tentatively set for Monday, June 30th.

However, the province has suggested it will keep the program going, provided its being viewed as helpful.

On the date of publish, there are 587 positions open in Interior Health connected to the search term “nurse” on Interior Health’s career finder portion of its website.

375 jobs for physicians in various fields and through different parts of Interior Health are still open.

While issues in Clearwater and Merritt have died down, the same cannot be said for Lillooet.

That community has seen its Emergency Room shut down repeatedly this year.

Over the course of 7 days in the 2nd week of June — Monday to Monday — the Lillooet ER was only open 37.5% of the time.

While steps have been taken to try to fix the underlying issue — a lack of available doctors — the process has been difficult.

With locums (temporary fill-in doctors) reportedly shunning offers to fill shifts in Lillooet for reasons that have not been made clear, the BC government BC Government has turned to its Practice Ready Assessment BC (PRA-BC) program to fill the gaps.

PRA-BC promises to pay the retraining and recertification costs of foreign-trained doctors who want to come to BC and continue practicing medicine, but also locks the physicians into a minimum three-year contract in the community they end up in.

One doctor has already chosen to land in Lillooet, with Interior Health saying three others should also be on the way this fall to join the program, but likely won’t be ready to take over ER shifts on their own until early 2026.