WHIDBEYHEALTH: Hospital board fires CEO, reverses decision during dramatic meeting
Kira Erickson reports from the Island County Board of Health meeting of Tue., Jan. 20, 2026, for the Whidbey News-Times. Read the whole story.
Summary by Perplexity AI
The WhidbeyHealth board abruptly voted 3–2 to fire CEO Nathan Staggs, then reversed course after doctors, nurses and staff flooded the meeting in protest and threatened resignations. Commissioner James Golder, accused by Staggs of retaliation over past ethics complaints, led the ouster, citing dire finances, while opponents said the hospital’s position has improved and praised Staggs’ leadership. CFO Paul Rogers reported cash reserves had more than doubled since 2024. HealthTech executives and an interim CEO choice deepened suspicions of a planned “coup,” and allegations surfaced of Open Public Meetings Act violations. After intense criticism, the board rescinded the firing and Golder resigned.
They Said It
Staggs and several others claimed that Golder was behind the termination and that he was upset with the CEO for calling him out on unethical behavior, which led to Golder being removed as the board president last year.
“This is you retaliating against me for bringing up issues about you,” Staggs said after being fired. “So it’ll be handled in court.”
Golder said the action was about finances.
“I mean, you’re running this hospital into the ground,” he said to Staggs, later claiming that the hospital was near closing.
Staggs said Golder’s claim that the hospital was more in debt today than when he arrived was “a lie.”
Throughout the meeting, [board president Marion] Jouas was pointedly critical of the effort to terminate Staggs and the unusual way the action occurred, apologizing to Staggs and saying that a “voting bloc” on the board was “hellbent” on getting rid of him.
“There is no cause to terminate this CEO,” she said. “…This is obviously a railroad job to remove the CEO. He has done great things here. Much of the medical staff is highly appreciative of him as is everyone in the hospital.”
Later in the meeting, [Commissioner Kirk] Gasper reiterated what had occurred for the benefit of a growing audience and said he was shocked.
“It was rammed through very quickly without any discussion, certainly without any way to prepare for it,” he said.
The board voted 3-2 to name Gregory Rickner as the interim CEO. Jouas pointed out that she had never seen his resume before and questioned how HealthTech, the company providing management services to the hospital, had an interim CEO lined up without talking to her since she had been president of the board for three months.
[Commissioner Mark] Borden clearly changed his mind earlier in the meeting after members of the medical staff spoke up. He said he was in physical pain during the meeting over the uproar, saying that the reason he ran for the position was to protect the medical staff. He said he has been ailing over the last few months and hadn’t been able to speak to the staff to get the pulse of the hospital.
Borden explained that he was presented with financial information prior to the meeting.
“The numbers thrown in my face were enough to scare the heck out of me,” he said. “I don’t want the hospital to close.”
Staggs, however, was critical of Borden, saying he had his mind made up before knowing the facts.
“These two are retaliating against me,” Staggs said to Borden, referring to Golder and Canby, “after I called them out on the carpet on things they were doing outside of their role as commissioners and they got you convinced before you even spoke one word to me. That is not the role of a commissioner.”
During the meeting Thursday, [former hospital commissioner Greg] Richardson attended via Zoom from his new home in Portugal and said the prior board hid Golder’s “unending unethical” behavior from the public. He gave several examples, saying Golder demanded a member of the executive team be fired and took it upon himself to ask a senior vice president of a bank to extend a line of credit to the hospital, threatening her “with the removal of accounts from WhidbeyHealth personnel.”
Gasper agreed with several audience members that there was obviously communication between three hospital commissioners outside of the meeting, which is a violation of the Open Public Meetings Act.
In the end, Richardson described the actions of the medical staff and executive team as “transformational.”
