Bend, Ore.-based St. Charles Health System has hired five new employees, all of whom are from CEO Joe Sluka's former employer, Rapid City, S.D.-based Regional Health, according to The Bulletin.
Mr. Sluka, who took over as St. Charles' CEO in December 2014, denies directly recruiting any of them apart from CIO Jeremiah Brickhouse. In fact, Lisa Goodman, a spokeswoman for St. Charles, said Mr. Sluka's noncompete clause with Regional Health doesn't allow him to directly recruit.
"I think when I left South Dakota to come to central Oregon, obviously people did some research to see what St. Charles was all about, what central Oregon was all about and probably monitored to see if there was going to be openings," Mr. Sluka said, according to the report.
Mr. Sluka and Mr. Brickhouse worked together at Regional Health for 14 years before Mr. Sluka played a role in recruiting him to St. Charles. "He was someone, when he was working at the analytics firm [Columbia, Md.-based Medisolv], that I called and said, 'Look, we've got a need at St. Charles. Here are the things we're going to start looking at,'" Mr. Sluka said, according to the report. "He was one of the people I really talked to about joining the organization."
But the other four hires from Regional Health? Mr. Sluka said he "absolutely" didn't directly recruit them. The group includes Joe Balfe, St. Charles' decision support manager; Emily Brick, facilitator; Rod Marchiando, senior vice president of improvement and strategy; and Byron Okutsu, director of health plan administration and payer contracting. St. Charles did not say when any of them were hired, according to the report.