Just eight months after being appointed to CEO, Redwood City, Calif.-based Verity Health System's board of directors demoted Mitchell Creem to chief administrative officer. Andrei Soran, who was hired in April as president and COO, took over as CEO late last week, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
Verity Health System, formerly Daughters of Charity Health System, hired B. Joseph Badalian to serve as the new COO, effective Sept. 1. Most recently, Mr. Badalian served as CEO at Fountain Valley (Calif.) Regional Hospital and Medical Center.
Here are five things to know about the executive team changes.
1. Verity, said it was "restructuring … the system's executive team" on July 28. Jack Krouskup, board chairman of Verity, said as CEO, Mr. Soran "will continue to lead the efforts to revitalize our Verity hospitals to ensure that they continue to serve our communities across California for generations to come," according to the report.
2. Mr. Soran told the San Francisco Business Times the restructuring aims to more effectively get "all hands on deck" to support the health system's turnaround. "It's a major effort, a fairly major turnaround," he said.
"This is the kind of thing you should expect," Wanda Jones, a hospital consultant and healthcare redesign expert, told the San Francisco Business Times about the leadership reshuffling. "It's in effect a startup, and you can expect to see more of this" as the company continues to work through kinks.
3. Skeptics purport that BlueMountain Capital Management — the New York City-based hedge fund that took over the former Daughters of Charity Health System hospital in December — got involved in the deal to gain access to the health system's real estate, not because it has a genuine interest in the welfare of the safety net hospitals, according to the report.
However, Mr. Soran insists Verity is moving in the right direction. "You have to have the right people on the bus, and we're getting the right people on the bus," said Mr. Soran, according to the report. "And once we have them, we need to have them in the right seats."
4. Prior to joining Verity, a safety net hospital system, Mr. Soran was COO and executive vice president at Detroit Medical Center, which is owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare.
5. As CEO, Mr. Soran will lead Verity's six California facilities, which include St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, St. VincentMedicalCenter in Los Angeles, O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy, and SetonMedicalCenter and Seton Coastside in Daly City.