In December, Tarek Salaway became Oregon Health & Science University’s new health system CEO. Just over three months later, he was fired.

What happened between, and after, is now the subject of considerable scrutiny after Salaway last week sued OHSU in Multnomah County Circuit Court for $15.5 million, alleging whistleblower retaliation and discrimination, claims the major medical center “vigorously” denies.

It’s a complex situation. Here are key points of contention.

Health Care

Salaway’s Allegations

Shortly after his firing became public, Salaway said OHSU was retaliating after he’d raised concerns over finances and patient safety. For months he declined to get much more specific—until the lawsuit arrived Aug 13.

It describes Salaway’s concern over the “crisis-level” rate of patient boarders in OHSU’s overcrowded emergency department. And the “severe adverse outcomes” in the OHSU respiratory therapy department that the lawsuit says had negatively impacted pediatric patients. And the “deteriorating financial performance” at OHSU-affiliated Hillsboro Medical Center, which, according to the suit, OHSU had to support as it lost more than $1 million a month.

The Bigger Picture

Emergency department overcrowding at OHSU is well established. The medical center’s president, Shereef Elnahal, discussed the matter at a December media event, and a department expansion is underway.

The respiratory therapy division has also drawn scrutiny. A former respiratory therapist sued in 2024, accusing a superior of lax safety protocols and strange, threatening behavior. More recently, complaints from the department were the basis of many of the fines regulators leveled against OHSU for violations of Oregon’s hospital staffing law.

Behavior and Culture

Salaway’s Allegations

Salaway argues his diligent work to tackle OHSU’s problems consistently came up against a bureaucracy invested in the status quo—and an institutional culture rife with sexism and other bias.

Some examples the suit gives: When Salaway tried to promote a female nursing leader to take point on the respiratory therapy issue, she was dismissed by others as “assertive” and “direct.” A qualified Black doctor he sought to empower was dismissed as unqualified, the suit says. It adds that Salaway himself was called condescending and dismissive—terms, it argues, which are “often disparagingly ascribed to leaders of LGBTQ+ backgrounds” like Salaway.

The Bigger Picture

In certain ways, witness statements OHSU staff gave university investigators in March characterize Salaway as he characterized himself: a CEO who, almost immediately upon his arrival, zealously set out to improve OHSU’s health care operations.

Some add, however, that Salaway, from his early days, had an arrogant streak, could listen poorly, and at times made unprofessional, disturbing comments that made some colleagues extremely uneasy.

OHSU maintains it fired Salaway over “professionalism and communications issues.”

Transparancy

Salaway’s Allegations

Salaway has long-maintained that OHSU cherry-picked the witness statements it released to the media so as to denigrate him with spurious hearsay that gave a misleading characterization of events. His suit says that records OHSU released omitted witness statements that might redound in his favor, including a 19-page document he’d himself submitted.

The Bigger Picture

WW asked Salaway’s attorney in June for a copy of the 19-page statement, and has not received it. The paper had obtained the initial witness statements through a public records request for formal complaints about Salaway—submitted shortly after he was abruptly fired.

Oregon Public Broadcasting has said, after WW’s report, it filed a public records request with OHSU seeking the whole case file of the medical center’s investigation into Salaway. OHSU, citing privacy concerns, has sued to block the release of those documents.