Oregon Health & Science University spent nearly two years searching for someone to take permanent command of its sprawling health system. The search stretched across the country and eventually landed on Tarek Salaway, a veteran health care executive with 28 years of leadership experience and a résumé that included Kaiser Permanente, Providence, Stanford Health Care and the University of Southern California.
OHSU introduced Salaway in November 2025 as the executive chosen to lead OHSU Health. He started Dec. 15 with a reported annual salary of $1.4 million and responsibility for one of the most influential health care operations in Oregon.
By March 10, he was on involuntary leave.
According to his civil complaint, he was fired March 18. OHSU publicly announced his departure April 3.
Five months later, the brief executive tenure that OHSU had spent years preparing to fill has become a $15.5 million civil lawsuit involving allegations of wrongful termination, retaliation and discrimination, along with disputes over patient safety, workplace conduct, executive management and the release of public records. OHSU denies the central allegations and maintains that Salaway was terminated for legitimate reasons involving professionalism and communication.
The collision between those competing accounts is rapidly turning an unusually short executive tenure into a potentially significant statewide legal battle involving Oregon’s public academic health center.
Salaway arrived in Portland with extensive experience running major medical operations. Before joining OHSU, he served as a senior vice president for Kaiser Permanente in California, overseeing strategy, operations, relationships and community affairs across service areas involving three medical centers and hundreds of thousands of members. His previous positions included leadership roles at Providence Mission Hospital, Keck Medical Center of USC, USC Norris Cancer Hospital and Stanford Health Care.
OHSU had invested considerable time in finding a permanent executive for the position. Salaway barely had time to complete his first quarter on the job before the relationship fractured.
An internal investigation examined complaints about his interactions with colleagues and his communication and management style. Witness accounts portrayed some encounters as difficult, dismissive or unsettling. More serious allegations followed involving comments Salaway was accused of making about a female colleague, including references to strangling her and cutting her throat.
Salaway denies making those statements.
The woman who was allegedly the subject of the comments told investigators she had concerns about her personal safety and professional reputation. She also described interactions in which she believed Salaway talked over her, failed to listen and treated her disrespectfully.
Salaway’s lawsuit attacks both the allegations and the process OHSU used to investigate them. He contends that his executive assistant, who allegedly would have been present when the threatening comments were supposedly made, did not provide firsthand confirmation. According to his complaint, some of the information used against him instead traveled through secondhand or thirdhand accounts.
His explanation for the collapse of his OHSU career reaches far beyond disagreements among executives.
Salaway alleges he was removed after challenging problems involving workplace discrimination, hospital operations and patient care. Among the episodes described in his lawsuit is a March 9 meeting involving human resources leadership and comments concerning the qualifications of a Black physician. Salaway contends that he believed the physician had been treated unfairly and that he reported his concerns to OHSU’s Office of Civil Rights.
One day later, on March 10, Salaway was placed on involuntary leave.
His complaint alleges that OHSU locked him out of its facilities and placed him under police surveillance. He also disputes OHSU’s interpretation of a hand gesture that became part of the investigation, maintaining that it resembled a baseball umpire signaling that someone was out rather than a gesture threatening violence.
Salaway further alleges that the way his behavior was interpreted was influenced by racial, religious and other biases, including anti-Muslim sentiment.
None of those allegations has been proven in court.
OHSU rejects Salaway’s version of events and says his termination was not retaliation for concerns involving patient safety, quality of care or workplace bias. The university has said it intends to vigorously defend itself against his claims.
The patient-care allegations could become one of the most important elements of the case because Salaway was not merely another administrator working inside OHSU. He had been recruited to run its health system.
His complaint alleges that he encountered serious operational problems after taking the position, including emergency department boarding, in which patients remained in the emergency department while waiting for hospital beds. He also raised concerns involving adverse outcomes connected with respiratory therapy that he alleges affected pediatric patients.
Salaway contends that he sought to strengthen the authority of senior nursing and health equity leadership to address safety, quality and patient-experience problems. His lawsuit portrays those efforts as part of a growing confrontation with other OHSU leaders.
OHSU disputes that account and denies that patient safety or quality concerns were responsible for his termination.
The executive conflict finally burst into public view April 3, when OHSU President Shereef Elnahal informed employees that Salaway was no longer CEO, effective immediately. Salaway responded by maintaining that his firing followed his efforts to raise serious concerns inside the institution.
His departure also occurred during a period of turnover around OHSU Health. Senior adviser Tim Kringen had departed in February, chief ambulatory officer Brooke Lippincott left in March, and Salaway’s senior executive assistant, Tionna Foglio-Reed, departed April 3. The timing alone does not establish that those departures were related to Salaway’s firing, but they added to the leadership changes unfolding around the health system.
Then the dispute moved into another arena: Oregon’s public records law.
A request was made for records from OHSU’s investigation, including material connected with the workplace review and Salaway’s termination. OHSU withheld portions of those records, maintaining that personnel, disciplinary and other legal protections applied.
Oregon Public Broadcasting, which had requested the records, challenged OHSU’s decision through the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office. The district attorney subsequently granted the petition seeking disclosure of disputed material.
OHSU then went to court.
On June 16, the university filed a lawsuit against Oregon Public Broadcasting seeking to prevent enforcement of the disclosure order, arguing that releasing certain investigative records would conflict with state and federal protections. OPB’s identification here is relevant because the news organization became a party to the separate public-records litigation, rather than serving as the source or basis of this account.
In that court dispute, OHSU characterized Salaway’s termination as involving professionalism and communication issues rather than serious misconduct. Nine witness statements from the internal investigation had already been released with identifying information removed.
The records battle and Salaway’s employment case have now converged.
Salaway alleges OHSU selectively released investigative information damaging to him while withholding other material that could provide additional context or support his version of events. He argues that the resulting publicity has severely damaged his professional reputation and ability to obtain another senior executive position in health care.
He is seeking $15.5 million in damages.
OHSU occupies a unique place in Oregon health care. It is the state’s public academic health center, a major destination for patients requiring highly specialized treatment and an institution involved in educating and training physicians, nurses and other health professionals who eventually practice throughout Oregon. Rural and regional hospitals regularly operate within a health care environment in which complex cases can ultimately move to OHSU when specialized treatment is unavailable closer to home.
Questions involving patient safety, hospital capacity and executive oversight at OHSU therefore extend beyond Portland city limits. If evidence ultimately substantiates allegations involving systemic patient-care or management failures, the implications could extend to patients and health care providers throughout Oregon. If the evidence instead supports OHSU’s contention that Salaway was legitimately terminated because of his own professional conduct and communications, the litigation could produce a very different conclusion.
That determination belongs to the courts and the evidence, not either side’s allegations.
The next chapters may also be considerably more revealing than the first. If Salaway’s lawsuit proceeds into discovery, attorneys could seek internal emails, personnel records, executive communications and other documents surrounding his recruitment, his approximately three months of active leadership, the investigation, his leave and his eventual termination. Depositions could place senior OHSU officials, witnesses and Salaway himself under oath to explain what happened behind closed doors.
OHSU will have the same opportunity to present evidence supporting its decision and challenge the accusations now being made against the institution.
For an organization that spent nearly two years searching for permanent leadership, the sequence is extraordinary even without deciding who ultimately proves correct. OHSU recruited an experienced national health care executive, installed him in a $1.4 million position in December, removed him from active duty before winter was over and terminated him in March. A fight over the investigative records followed, OHSU went to court to prevent portions of those records from being released, and the executive it hired is now demanding $15.5 million from the institution.
What happened during those few months inside OHSU Health is no longer simply an internal personnel matter. It is becoming a public court record, one filing at a time, and the evidence produced through those proceedings may ultimately determine whether Salaway was an executive legitimately removed over workplace concerns or a health system leader retaliated against after challenging problems inside one of Oregon’s most important medical institutions.