Welcome to this week's Chutes & Ladders, our roundup of hirings, firings and retirings throughout the industry. Please submit the good news—or the bad—from your shop, and we will feature it here at the end of each week.
Amedisys
(Amedisys)
Paul Kusserow will retire from his role as CEO of home health, hospice and personal care company Amedisys on April 15.
He will be succeeded by President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Gerard, who will drop the latter title and join the company’s board of directors at the same time. Kusserow will remain in his role as chairman of the board.
Kusserow has led Amedisys since 2014 and during that time expanded its service lines to include personal care, palliative care, hospital at home and skilled nursing at home.
(Amedisys)
Amedisys also increased its market cap from $900 million to more than $5.3 billion, its revenue by over 74% and its Home Health Quality of Patient Care Star score from 3.5 to 4.33 stars under his watch.
Gerard was the co-founder, president and CEO of IntegraCare Home Health, which he sold to Kindred Healthcare in 2012. He stayed with Kindred as part of its Kindred at Home business for about four years before departing as the president of its South Central region.
Mercy
Inbound Mercy President and CEO Steve Mackin has announced a slew of new senior leadership members that will accompany the executive upon his April 1 appointment to the head of the $5 billion revenue Catholic healthcare system.
(Mercy)
Shannon Sock will be adding to his responsibilities at Mercy as he takes on the dual roles of chief operating officer and chief strategist. He has been with the system for more than 20 years, notably leading projects that created Mercy’s supply chain operating division and rolled out an early implementation of its electronic health record system.
John Mohart, M.D., was named president of Mercy Communities and will be responsible for the system’s hospital operations. He is the first physician to be named to the position.
Cheryl Matejka is stepping in as Mercy’s new senior vice president and chief financial officer, taking on Sock’s previous responsibilities. She has held a handful of Mercy leadership positions since 2006, notably seeing multiple promotions within the system’s finance department.
Dave Thompson is taking up a new role as senior vice president of strategic integration. Thompson has had a hand in designing many of Mercy’s current value-based contracts.
Ajay Pathak will step into an expanded role as senior vice president and chief strategic ventures officer. He’s tasked with growing Mercy’s outpatient and retail footprint, having most recently headed the system’s acquisition of Dierbergs pharmacy operations and the Mercy-GoHealth Urgent Care joint venture.
Alongside these five new appointments, Mercy noted that Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer; Senior Vice President and Chief Physician Executive Jeff Ciaramita, M.D.; Senior Vice President of Population Health Gavin Helton, M.D.; Executive Vice President, Office of Transformation Joe Kelly; Senior Vice President of Mission and Community Health Kevin Minder; Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer Betty Jo Rocchio; and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Phil Wheeler will all remain on Mercy’s senior executive team during the transition.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
(Memorial Sloan Kettering
Cancer Center)
Rémy Evard joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to serve as its chief digital officer and head of technology. He is succeeding Claus Jensen, who left the organization back in May 2021.
With about 30 years of tech leadership under his belt, Evard comes to the treatment and research institution from a stint as the chief information and digital officer of life sciences venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering.
Prior to that, he held the role of global chief information officer at the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research from 2006 to 2018 and a decade of other leadership positions at Argonne National Laboratory.
Evard will be heading design and execution of the cancer center’s digital strategy, further building on the organization’s recent investments in digital tools and tech optimization. He’ll also be directing its Digital Informatics & Technology Solutions team, which boasts more than 1,000 employees.
> Centene Corporation tapped Jim Murray as chief transformation officer.
> Privia Health added Jeffrey Sherman as executive vice president and chief financial officer.
> The Department of Health and Human Services named Angela Ramirez to the role of deputy chief of staff, replacing Anne Reid.
> Intermountain Healthcare appointed Allison Corry as chief supply officer and vice president of Intermountain Healthcare Supply Chain Organization.
> Wellforce has brought on Christine Madigan as its first-ever chief consumer officer. She comes from a handful of global marketing and brand management roles at New Balance Athletics and will start at the health system on Jan. 24.
> Manatt, Phelps & Phillips expanded its Manatt Health team with Christina Jenkins, M.D., in New York as a national advisor and Claudia Page in San Francisco as a senior advisor.
> LifePoint Health announced William Haugh as the new president of its mountain division, effective Jan. 31.
> The Children’s Hospital Association named Stanford Children’s Health President and CEO Paul King as the chair of its board of trustees.
> Tendo Systems, a care journey software maker, picked up Bala Hota, M.D., as senior vice president and chief informatics officer.
> Rhode Island Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott, M.D., announced her resignation. She served in the role since April 2016.
> Availity, a health information network, announced Bobbi Coluni as chief product officer.
> Cone Health’s Annie Penn Hospital named Interim President Angie Orth as its permanent president.
> Spectrum Health West Michigan appointed Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Kimberlee Sherbrooke as senior vice president of medical group operations, effective Feb. 28.
> UPMC named Patti Jackson-Gehris as chief operating officer of its north central Pennsylvania region and president of UPMC Williamsport, effective Feb. 1.
> Aon added Farheen Dam as its new head of North America Health Solutions.
> Crisis Prevention Institute brought on former Aurora Health Care CEO Nick Turkal, M.D., to serve on its board of directors.
> Osso VR, a virtual reality surgical training platform, named Cory Calendine, M.D., to its clinical advisory board.