In July 2019, Moody's Investors Service weighed in on how a dual-CEO leadership style could affect Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, saying the model could be "cumbersome, potentially effecting [sic] the rate of organizational and cultural change."
Just six months later, CommonSpirt is abandoning the model. While some merging entities only plan to sustain the co-CEO model for a year after merging or have a succession plan in place, questions on the model's effectiveness remain.
Here are four health systems that recently ditched the dual-CEO model:
1. CommonSpirit Health co-CEO Kevin Lofton will retire from his role June 30. Co-CEO Lloyd Dean will take over as the organization's leader July 1. The co-CEO model was formed when San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives formed CommonSpirt in February 2019.
2. Advocate Aurora Health moved to a single CEO model after it named Jim Skogsbergh president and CEO of the 28-hospital system in July 2019. The co-CEO model was put into place in April 2018 when Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care and Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care merged to form Advocate Aurora Health.
3. In May 2019, Greenville, S.C.-based Prisma Health named Mark O'Halla its sole president and CEO to succeed Michael Riordan and Charles Beaman Jr. The two served as co-CEOs since the merger of Columbia, S.C.-based Palmetto Health and Greenville (S.C.) Health System in 2017.
4. John Lloyd, co-CEO of Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health, announced his retirement in December 2018. He co-led Hackensack Meridian Health with Robert Garrett since Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center and Meridian Health merged in 2016.