Howard Kern has served as president and CEO of Sentara Healthcare, a nonprofit hospital system with net revenues of $5.1 billion, since March 4.
At the helm of Sentara, based in Norfolk, Va., Mr. Kern oversees 12 acute care hospitals, 10 nursing centers and three assisted living centers in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, with more than 1,000 physicians across its four medical groups. In addition to serving as a healthcare provider, Sentara operates a health plan with 450,000 covered lives in Virginia, Ohio and Alabama.
Here are four things to know about Mr. Kern.
1. Mr. Kern's executive management career spans 36 years. He has experience in the hospital, managed health insurance and ambulatory services settings, as well as in healthcare finance. Previously, Mr. Kern served as COO at Sentara.
2. He is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and obtained his master's in health administration from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, and is on the faculty as a lecturer in the school of health administration. In addition, Mr. Kern completed the CEO Program for Health Care Leadership at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
3. Mr. Kern serves on multiple professional, corporate and community boards, including HealthEast, a nonprofit health system in St. Paul, Minn., Future Hampton Roads, Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance, MDLive, ReInvent Hampton Roads, Town Point Club, Virginia Biosciences Health Research Corp., the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Virginia Wesleyan College. He served as chairman of the board of Westminster Canterbury Chesapeake Bay, a continuing care retirement community in Virginia Beach, Va., until January 2016.
4. Upon his appointment in March, Mr. Kern named three key areas of focus that will guide his tenure as CEO, including clinical performance improvement, innovation and growth and customer centricity. "Howard is a terrific leader who has inherited and taken the helm of an outstanding health system," Scott Becker, publisher of Becker's Hospital Review, said of Mr. Kern.