ST. ALBANS — Dr. Dean French, CEO of Northwestern Medical Heart, might be leaving in August to turn into the chief medical officer at ScionHealth.
The announcement of his departure, which was a shock to NMC’s board of administrators, comes simply 18 months after French took on the hospital’s high management place.
In a press release to employees and medical employees, NMC Board President Jake Holzscheiter mentioned that though this modification was sudden, the board of administrators is happy with the progress NMC has made beneath French’s management.
“Previous to the hiring of Dr. French, NMC went via a really broad and thorough means of defining what NMC must be,” Holzscheiter mentioned. “That led to a strategic deal with bettering security, high quality and monetary sustainability. Nice work has been finished and our route stays unchanged. We’re assured that NMC is in an excellent place to proceed the work on these shared objectives that all of us consider in.”
The NMC board of administrators will meet within the coming days to outline the method for recruiting a brand new CEO. The hospital will search a frontrunner with the energy and expertise to assist NMC proceed to maneuver ahead on its strategic path, in keeping with an April 26 press launch.
French succeeded Jill Berry Bowen, who served because the hospitals’s lead for a decade. Chosen from a pool of 75 candidates, he arrived at NMC on Nov. 30, 2020 after spending 5 years because the CEO of Group Medical Heart in Missoula, Montana. Previous to changing into a doctor, French served within the U.S. Army Special Forces.
In a January 2021 interview with the Messenger, French mentioned he had been actively in search of a management function at an impartial, neighborhood hospital that had a strong legacy. Impartial hospitals have gotten much less and fewer widespread within the U.S., he mentioned on the time, as a result of elevated acquisition and consolidation of healthcare companies.
ScionHealth, the place French is headed in August, is a 79-hospital healthcare system unfold throughout 25 states, and based mostly in Louisville, KY.
