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HCA’s Tim McManus promoted to national role

HCA Healthcare Inc. is promoting the president of its Richmond-based Capital Division, Tim McManus, to lead its national operating group, effective Jan. 1, HCA announced Tuesday.

Dr. William Lunn, who currently serves as CEO of HCA’s Chippenham and Johnston-Willis hospitals, will follow McManus as HCA’s new Capital Division president. The division includes 19 hospitals in Virginia, New Hampshire, Indiana and Kentucky. Lunn will be based in Richmond.

In his new role, McManus will oversee HCA’s National Group, which includes HCA’s Capital, North Carolina, TriStar, Mountain and Far West divisions. It includes 60 hospitals in 11 states. He succeeds HCA executive Chuck Hall, who is retiring as HCA’s National Group president at the end of the year, following a 36-year career with HCA.

The National Group is one of three HCA operating groups, each of which contains five domestic divisions. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, HCA previously had two operating groups but a third was created as part of a recent organizational restructuring. These changes, along with several other executive moves across the organization, also will become effective Jan. 1. McManus will be based out of Nashville.

“While I have been with HCA Healthcare for over 15 years, I have been privileged to spend the majority of that time as a part of the Capital Division, serving first as CEO for Reston Hospital Center and later as CEO of Chippenham and Johnston-Willis hospitals, before becoming division president six years ago,” McManus said. “Throughout all of these roles, I have immensely enjoyed working with the teams. Their commitment to our patients and colleagues is the greatest strength of this division and I couldn’t be prouder of everything we’ve accomplished.”

McManus has been in his current role, overseeing HCA’s Capital Division, since 2016. Before that, he served as CEO of HCA’s Chippenham and Johnston-Willis hospitals in Chesterfield County. McManus graduated from Tulane and Johns Hopkins universities with degrees in psychology and health care administration. He is also vice chairman of the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association’s board.

Lunn is a Harvard fellowship-trained executive and served as president and CEO of Tulane Health System before leading hospitals in Virginia. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tulane University and attended the University of Texas Southwestern for medical school. Lunn has had a private practice in pulmonary and critical care medicine. He was a founding member of Baylor College of Medicine’s Airway and Pleural Disease Center and served as its first director, along with other roles there. He has also been chief operating officer at Christus Health, in Northern Louisiana.

“I am excited to assume my new role as Capital Division president,” Lunn said in a statement. “It will be a great opportunity to draw upon lessons learned throughout my career, from the bedside as a pulmonologist, to a hospital administrator, to a healthcare executive. The key to success will always be to empower our colleagues and give them all of the tools they need to continue to care like family for every patient who chooses our hospitals for their healthcare needs.”

HCA has more than 283,000 employees, about 17,000 of whom work within the Richmond-headquartered Capital Division. The company reported $14.971 billion in revenues for the third quarter, slightly down from 2021’s third-quarter earnings. However, revenues are up for the nine months ending Sept. 30, totaling $44.736 billion, up, compared to $43.688 billion in the same period of 2021.

 

HCA Capital Division names regional cancer VP

Angela Fletcher is the new regional vice president of cancer programs for HCA Healthcare Capital Division and HCA’s Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute, the health system announced last week.

Fletcher oversees cancer programs in 18 hospitals across Virginia, New Hampshire, Indiana and Kentucky. She is based in Richmond and began her new role on Sept. 25.

“Angela brings experience, knowledge and strong leadership for our Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute and our oncology programs in all of our facilities. We welcome her extensive experience and perspective to our team,” Shaila Menees, HCA Healthcare Capital Division senior vice president of strategy and business development, said in a statement.

Fletcher was previously regional vice president for oncology services for Sarah Cannon in the HCA Healthcare North Carolina division. In her three-year tenure in that role she led implementation of Sarah Cannon’s governance structure and oversaw advancement for four clinical programs.

Before joining HCA, Fletcher was the vice president of clinical programs and acute medicine for Mission Health in Asheville, North Carolina. She also served as the sponsor for the Women’s Colleague Network for the North Carolina division. She started her career at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in clinical operations, quality and systems engineering.

Fletcher received a master’s degree in organizational leadership with a focus on health care and ethical leadership from the College of St. Catherine, now St. Catherine University, in Minnesota. She is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified.

A division of Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, HCA’s Richmond-headquartered Capital Division includes 19 hospitals in Virginia, New Hampshire, Indiana and Kentucky. HCA has more than 283,000 employees, about 17,000 of whom work within the Capital Division.

On the mend

After two years of severe staff shortages at health care facilities nationwide, conditions at the big three hospital systems in Hampton Roads are improving.

“The last two years have been some of the most challenging times for nurses in our lifetime,” says Cassie Lewis, chief nursing and quality officer for Bon Secours’ Hampton Roads market. “No one has an overabundance of nurses,” she notes, but Bon Secours was able to hire 150 nurses during a three-month period earlier this year. As of August, its job vacancy rate had dropped by 25%, compared with the prior six months.

“All my metrics are moving in the right direction,” Lewis says.

To keep metrics positive, though, hospitals, like just about every other business in America, have had to increase pay substantially, with merit raises, bonuses and cash rewards now an expected — even standard — part of compensation. In the past two years alone, for example, Sentara Healthcare says it has invested $310 million in covering the added costs of attracting and keeping health care workers.

A big chunk of such investments has gone toward benefits. Among numerous upgrades, Sentara now offers its nearly 30,000 workers a paid personal day, which 2,500 employees already have taken. It also has instituted a program that pays as much as $400 a month toward student loans, with more than 3,000 employees now enrolled.

With 9,500 employees, Riverside Health System has added a personal day and started a child care subsidy. It also offers money toward college, a benefit that has “been very well received,” says Jesse Goodrich, the health care system’s senior vice president of human resources. And at Bon Secours, which employs about 11,500 people in Virginia, paid parental leave has quadrupled from two weeks to eight weeks, and nurses are given a huge say in which facility they work at, a policy change that has received “an overwhelmingly positive” response, Lewis says.

With Virginia hospitals having lost some nurses during the height of the pandemic to better-paying travel nursing jobs or lower-stress private practices, competitive compensation is key to hospitals staying staffed — but so is listening to employees, executives say.

Goodrich notes that Riverside regularly surveys employees to “find the pebbles in their shoes.” Goodrich and Lewis insist that creating a positive workplace — even more than pay or benefits — is what ultimately attracts and retains employees.

“Health care is all about relationships,” says Goodrich, while Lewis says that “money is not what any nurse is in the business for.”

Aside from patient-level staffing, the three health systems have made some changes at the top. Most notably, in September, former Sentara Health Plans President Dennis Matheis succeeded Howard P. Kern as Sentara Healthcare’s new president and CEO. In September, Bill Downey announced he would step down as CEO at the end of 2022, with Dr. Michael Dacey, president and chief operating officer, succeeding Downey on Jan. 1. Allan Parrott, former CEO of Tidewater Fleet Supply LLC, was elected chair of Sentara’s board in June. And last fall, Pat Davis-Hagens came from Bon Secours Mercy Health’s The Jewish Hospital in Ohio to serve as Bon Secours’ Hampton Roads market president.

Sentara’s upcoming initiatives include increased community outreach, adding community clinics in affordable housing communities; a health care bus; and a $5 million investment in 30 community organizations involved in eliminating barriers to health and human services.

Riverside Behavioral Health Center’s emergency department is set to open in Newport News late next year, and in Williamsburg, the hospital system has broken ground on a 67,000-square-foot medical office building.

The system’s largest undertaking, though, will be Riverside Smithfield Hospital, a project anticipated to cost $100 million. Construction of the 50-bed acute-care hospital in Isle of Wight County is expected to begin this fall, with an opening date of late 2025 or early 2026. 

StoneSprings, Dominion hospitals name new CFO

Christopher “Chris” Landry will become chief financial officer for StoneSprings Hospital Center and Dominion Hospital on Sept. 5, HCA Virginia Health System announced Tuesday.

“We are excited to have Chris join our leadership team,” StoneSprings Hospital Center CEO Nathan Vooys said in a statement. “I am confident that his experience has given him a strong foundation to lead the financial operations of StoneSprings and Dominion hospitals.”

StoneSprings Hospital Center in Dulles is a 234,000-square-foot, 124-bed facility that serves Loudoun County and surrounding areas. Dominion Hospital in Falls Church had 116 licensed beds in 2020.

Landry currently serves as assistant CFO for the three campuses of Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, which has a total of 766 beds. He joined HCA in 2013 when he became staff accountant of Poinciana Medical Center in Florida and was promoted to lead accountant in 2017. Landry then moved to Ocala Hospital as assistant controller and became controller in 2018.

Landry, who holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from San Francisco State University, will be relocating to Northern Virginia.

A subsidiary of Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, HCA Virginia Health System operates 14 hospitals, 27 outpatient centers and five freestanding emergency rooms, many of which are clustered in Northern Virginia and Central Virginia. HCA Virginia is affiliated with 3,000 physicians.

Inova Fairfax Hospital retains No.1 state ranking

For the second year in a row, Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church has been named the best hospital in Virginia on U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of the best hospitals in the nation, which was released Tuesday.

The Inova Health System’s hospital also ranked as the top hospital in the Washington, D.C., metro area, and ranked third in Virginia for children’s hospitals and No. 14 in the mid-Atlantic for children’s care. Inova Fairfax Hospital ranked No. 10 in the nation for obsetrics and gynecology and No. 40 for neonatology. (U.S. News includes data from Inova L.J. Murphy Children’s Hospital in its evaluation of Inova Fairfax Hospital.)

Last year Inova Fairfax unseated University of Virginia Medical Center as the No. 1 hospital and kept the top spot this year.

“World-class health care is a team sport and I am proud to lead the Inova team which steps up every day, year after year, to deliver the safest and highest quality care to those we are privileged to serve,” President and CEO of Inova J. Stephen Jones said in a statement. “To be named the No. 1 hospital in the state and the region for the second consecutive year during a transformative period in health care illustrates our exceptional team and their ongoing commitment to putting our patients and communities at the center of everything we do.”

U.S. News and World Report’s 2022-2023 Best Hospitals rankings relied on data from more than 5,000 hospitals. Nationally, 164 hospitals ranked in at least one of the 15 specialties assessed. For 12 of the specialties, the rankings are determined by performance data in structure, process and outcomes. For the remaining three — ophthalmology, psychiatry and rheumatology — the rankings rely on expert opinion.

Nationally, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, retained its ranking as the nation’s top hospital.

U.S. News and World Report evaluated 122 hospitals in Virginia, with 17 meeting the publication’s standards for ranking:

The following are U.S. News and World Report’s 2022-23 best hospitals in Virginia:

1. Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church

2. University of Virginia Medical Center, Charlottesville

3. (tie) Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, Norfolk

3. (tie) VCU Medical Center, Richmond

5. Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Roanoke

6. Winchester Medical Center, Winchester

7. Centra Lynchburg General Hospital, Lynchburg

8. (tie) Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, Fairfax

8. (tie) Sentra Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville 

10. (tie) Inova Alexandria Hospital, Alexandria

10. (tie) Mary Washington Hospital, Fredericksburg

12. (tie) Henrico Doctors’ Hospitals, Richmond

12. (tie) Sentara Virginia Beach Hospital, Virginia Beach

12. (tie) Virginia Hospital Center, Arlington

15. Chippenham and Johnston-Willis Hospitals, Richmond

16. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, Chesapeake

17. Bon Scours Memorial Regional Medical Center, Mechanicsville

Ranked No. 2 in the state, U.Va. Medical Center ranked nationally in six children’s specialties: No. 32 in the nation for neonatology, No. 20 for pediatric cardiology and heart surgery, No. 49 in pediatric diabetes and endocrinology, No. 39 in pediatric gastroenterology and GI surgery, No. 45 for pediatric neurology & neurosurgery and No. 44 for pediatric pulmonology & lung surgery. It ranked No. 1 in Virginia for children’s care, and No. 7 in the mid-Atlantic for children’s care.

VCU Medical Center, which ranked third in Virginia, was the top hospital for Richmond for the 12th consecutive year, No. 2 in Virginia for children’s care and No. 9 in the mid-Atlantic for children’s care. Nationally, it ranked No. 47 for cardiology and heart surgery. In children’s care, it ranked nationally in three specialties: No. 37 for pediatric pulmonology and lung surgery, No. 33 for pediatric urology and No. 31 for pediatric nephrology.

Sentara Norfolk General Hospital ranked No. 1 in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News area. Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital ranked second and Chesapeake Regional Medical Center ranked third in that area of the commonwealth.

In the Richmond region, VCU Medical Center ranked No. 1, Henrico Doctor’s Hospitals ranked No. 2, Chippenham and Johnston-Willis Hospitals ranked third and Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center ranked fourth.

For the publication’s Washington, D.C., metro list, Inova Fairfax Hospital ranked at the top. Inova Fair Oaks in Fairfax ranked No. 4, Inova Alexandria Hospital in Alexandria and Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg tied for No. 5 and Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington ranked No. 7.

Henrico Doctors’ Hospital names new chief medical officer

Dr. Ajit Singh is the new chief medical officer of Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, HCA Virginia Health System announced Wednesday.

Henrico Doctors’ Hospital encompasses the Forest, Parham and Retreat campuses.

“Ajit values teamwork and is passionate about providing best-in-class care to our patients,” Henrico Doctors’ Hospital CEO Ryan Jensen said in a statement. “We are fortunate to have such an accomplished and collaborative leader join our campuses and help guide us during this challenging moment in healthcare.”

Singh has been with HCA Healthcare for 13 years and was most recently the chief medical officer of HCA Virginia’s Johnston-Willis Hospital. While there, he improved physician engagement survey results and helped decrease hospital-associated infections, HCA said in a news release.

Prior to joining HCA Healthcare, Singh was chief medical officer of Terre Haute Regional Hospital in Indiana.

Singh holds bachelor’s degrees in medicine and surgery and a postgraduate degree in dermatology from Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in India. He completed a family medicine residency at Southside Hospital, now South Shore University Hospital, in New York, and he holds an MBA from Indiana University.

HCA Virginia Health System operates 14 hospitals, 27 outpatient centers and five freestanding emergency rooms and is affiliated with 3,000 physicians.

Bon Secours Richmond president leaving for Pa. health system

Bon Secours Mercy Health Richmond President Faraaz Yousef will be leaving the health system to become chief operating officer and an executive vice president for Pennsylvania-based WellSpan Health.

He will end his tenure at Bon Secours on April 29 and the health system is conducting a national search for his successor.

“Faraaz has led the Richmond team through one of the most challenging times in health care, navigating a global pandemic while simultaneously expanding access to care in the Richmond region,” a Bon Secours spokesperson said in an email. “He led the effort to break ground on a new emergency department facility in Chester, Virginia, and the renovation of Rappahannock General Hospital. He and his team also successfully integrated two new hospitals and the acquisition of a large orthopedic physician practice into the Richmond Market. “

Yousef starts his new role on June 6, succeeding John Porter, who plans to retire June 30, a WellSpan Health spokesperson said in an email. WellSpan owns seven hospitals in central Pennsylvania.

Yousef has served as president of the Bon Secours’ Richmond market since December 2019 following Bon Secours and Mercy Health completed their merger in 2018. He joined Bon Secours Mercy Health in July 2019 as chief strategy officer of the Atlantic Group, a role in which he was responsible for strategic planning across Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, New York and Maryland. Yousef has overseen seven hospitals and three freestanding emergency centers as market president.

In January 2020, Bon Secours finalized its purchase of Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg, Southern Virginia Regional Medical Center in Emporia and Southampton Memorial Hospital in Franklin. The health system had previously announced the acquisition in October 2019. In November 2021, Bon Secours acquired Richmond-based Tuckahoe Orthopaedics.

The system is working on a $50 million expansion of Memorial Regional Medical Center in Mechanicsville and a $119 million expansion of St. Francis Medical Center in Chesterfield County. In 2021, Bon Secours began working on a $30 million free-standing emergency center in Chester.

He previously worked with Baltimore-based LifeBridge Health as president of its Northwest Hospital and a senior vice president. Beforehand, Yousuf was COO of Sutter Health’s Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, California, and prior to that, COO of Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, California, for HCA Healthcare (then Hospital Corp. of America).

Yousuf holds a master’s in health care administration and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. He serves on the board of directors for Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association.

One of the top 20 health systems in the United States, Bon Secours Mercy Health was formed in 2018 following the merger of Bon Secours Health System and Cincinnati-based Mercy Health.

Newsweek ranks U.Va. Medical Center top Va. hospital

Newsweek ranked Charlottesville’s University of Virginia Medical Center as the No. 1 hospital in Virginia in its World’s Best Hospitals 2022 guide, which was released March 2.

“Our team members have faced incredible challenges over the past two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have persevered to provide excellent care for all of our patients,” U.Va. Medical Center CEO Wendy Horton said in a statement. “This award from Newsweek is another sign of all they have accomplished in service of our patients.”

The hospital ranked No. 42 in the U.S. and placed within the top 250 hospitals globally.

“This honor from Newsweek reflects the incredible dedication of our entire team as they provide the most advanced, comprehensive care for patients from across Virginia and beyond,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, CEO of UVA Health and executive vice president for health affairs at U.Va, in a statement. “This is a well-deserved honor for UVA Health.”

Newsweek’s rankings are based on recommendations from more than 80,000 medical experts in 27 countries, patient experience surveys and medical performance indicators such as quality of care, infection-prevention measures and patient safety.

While UVA Medical Center was the only Virginia hospital to rank within the top 250 globally, several other Virginia hospitals made the U.S. rankings:

  1. VCU Medical Center, Richmond
  2. Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church
  3. Inova Alexandria Hospital, Alexandria
  4. Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, Williamsburg
  5. Virginia Hospital Center, Arlington
  6. Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, Richmond
  7. Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, Norfolk
  8. Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, Fairfax
  9. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Leesburg
  10. Sentara Princess Anne Hospital, Virginia Beach
  11. Sentara Leigh Hospital, Norfolk
  12. Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, Alexandria
  13. Sentara – Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville
  14. Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Roanoke

Code red

Although many business sectors focused on moving on from the COVID-19 pandemic once vaccines became broadly available in 2021, Virginia’s health care industry has remained heavily burdened by continuing caseload surges and extreme staffing shortages.

In September 2021, Gov. Ralph Northam voiced frustration at a news conference, saying, “It’s getting to the point where we worry about nurses and technicians and custodians — they’re at the point where they can’t take it anymore. We don’t want to get to that point, where there aren’t enough [staffed] beds.”

And yet, health systems did reach that point early this year, as the delta and omicron variants of the virus led to a record-breaking 3,329 hospitalized COVID patients in Virginia, nearly all of whom were unvaccinated. Days later, as one of his final acts in office, Northam declared a 30-day state of emergency, allowing hospitals greater latitude in staffing and nursing homes to increase the number of staffed beds.

After Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office Jan. 15, he signed a temporary executive order allowing nurses and other health care workers from out of state to practice in Virginia and giving care providers more leeway to increase bed capacity and the use of telemedicine.

In late December 2021, the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association issued a statement advocating for Virginians with mild COVID cases and other nonserious illnesses to avoid unnecessary trips to emergency rooms.

“It’s crucial for community members to seek the appropriate level of care, ensuring that emergency rooms are reserved for emergencies,” said VHHA Board Chair Steve Arner, Carilion Clinic’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “Of course, the best support that you can give is to get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19.”

Vaccine skepticism also impacted health care workers, as many Virginia systems mandated that their workers receive shots. Some staffers refused and left their jobs, while others quit to become higher-paid travel nurses, took nonclinical positions or left health caare altogether.

Post-traumatic stress, retirements and overall fatigue and burnout were contributing factors to higher-than-average nurse turnover rates, Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine said during his October 2021 congressional testimony.

Tennessee-based Ballad Health, which serves Southwest Virginia, reported 27% turnover last fall, compared with an average of 15% before the pandemic. In September 2021, UVA Health reported a voluntary turnover rate of 19.1% among registered nurses, significantly higher than its average of 10% to 12%.

Sentara Healthcare and VCU Health announced in January that they were stopping elective medical procedures indefinitely, and in late December 2021, the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians urged Northam to provide more COVID testing and care at primary care offices and urgent care clinics in order to ease the load on ERs, saying that the state’s emergency medicine system “is under threat of collapse due to excessive patient volume.”

Although U.S. public health officials were optimistic in late January that the omicron variant was beginning to subside, the long-term implications of health care staffing shortages are still considered a crisis, particularly in underserved regions of Virginia. 

In August 2021, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University entered into an agreement to form the state’s first school of public health, and in December 2021, ODU, EVMS and Sentara agreed to create a collaborative academic health center in Hampton Roads.

According to Sentara President and CEO Howard Kern, the Hampton Roads region is the largest metropolitan area in the nation without an integrated, state university-based medical school.

“Health care is already at crisis levels in terms of talent development and workforce,” Kern said at the December signing. “Strengthening our ability to train and deploy health professionals here in Hampton Roads is essential.” 

 

 

 

HCA Healthcare Capital Division promotes chief nurse executive

Richmond-based HCA Healthcare Capital Division announced Tuesday it had promoted Erin Keister as the new division chief nurse executive, effective Feb. 21.

“Erin is a strong and empowering leader in the nursing field,” HCA Healthcare Capital Division President Tim McManus said in a statement. “During the pandemic, when health care has been challenged in ways never before experienced and nurses are being particularly impacted, Erin has demonstrated the ability to recruit and retain high quality nurses while maintaining the highest care standards for our patients.”

Keister will establish the strategic direction for nursing operations and care for the division’s 19 hospitals across four states: Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

She has served in various roles in her 10 years with the division, including as chief nurse officer at Chippenham Hospital in Chesterfield County and at John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. At Chippenham, Keister led the effort to improve nursing recruitment and retention by creating relationships with nursing academic programs to expanding the use of nurse externs and clinical rotations.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Radford University and a master’s degree in nursing from Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke.

Keister serves as a commissioner of nursing policy and practice for the Virginia Nurses Association and is an advisory board member for nursing programs at ECPI University, John Tyler Community College and South University.