MetroHealth getting started on search for new CEO

Less than a month after its CEO announced plans to resign, public safety net hospital MetroHealth System is starting the process to look for a successor.

MetroHealth has posted on its website a request for proposals from executive search firms that would assist the hospital in locating candidates for the CEO position, according to an update from Ronald Fountain, chairman of MetroHealth’s board. Fountain said he would periodically provide similar updates to “maintain transparency in the search process.”

In addition to looking for an executive search firm, the board has appointed the leaders of a search committee, with those leaders expected to fill the remaining slots on the committee.

Fountain’s update didn’t provide a time line for any of the next steps in the process of finding a replacement for existing CEO Mark Moran.

Finding a well-qualified candidate who actually wants the job may not be easy. Moran himself has referred to public hospitals as an “endangered species” with federal health reform representing a “freight train heading toward us.”

MetroHealth’s finances are shaky as it stares down increases in unreimbursed care, a decrease in its subsidy from Cuyahoga County and reductions in reimbursement from government programs and private health insurers. In particular, an increase in poverty in the suburbs of Cleveland has had a “dramatic effect” on MetroHealth, Moran has said.

The problem for Moran’s successor will be that none of those issues are easily solved or likely to go away anytime soon.