Search begins for new VCU Health System CEO
The search for VCU’s new Chief Executive Officer for the VCU Health System and a new vice president for VCU Health Sciences has been announced and the search committee begins meetings this week.
Kris Mason
Staff Writer
The search for VCU’s new Chief Executive Officer for the VCU Health System and a new vice president for VCU Health Sciences has been announced and the search committee begins meetings this week.
VCU is using the search firm Isaacson Miller consultants who are helping VCU in the process of searching for candidates.
There are two chairs of the search committee that have been appointed: co-chairs Eva Teig Hardy and Dr. John Ward.
Hardy is the VCUHS board director and Ward is the president and chief medical officer of MCV Physicians.
Other on the search committee is Jay Bonfill, John Butterworth, Ellen Byrne, Deborah Davis, Tom Farrell, Sheryl Garland, William Ginther, Teddy Gottwald, Gail Hackett, Pamela Lepley, Colette McEachin, Tyrone Nelson, T.K. Somanath, RIck Wagoner and John Wiencek.
VCU president Michael Rao is confident in the teams ability to find the best candidate for the position.
“The individuals who have unselfishly agreed to serve on the committee represent the depth and breadth of the enterprise,” Rao said in a press release to the VCU health system community on February 10. “We are all committed to an expeditious and rigorous search.
The committee will meet for the first time on Feb. 17. There will be web site launched about the search by the end of the month to let the public know the status.
The CEO of the university health system position became available after former Sheldon M. Retchin stepped down. Ratchin is going Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center where he will be vice president of health sciences and CEO. He will begin his new job as on March 2 after being at VCU for 32 years.
The role that is being filled is important due to the wide variety duties the person is responsible for. In his time at the position, Retchin recruited deans for schools of medicine, directed the MCV hospitals, and added Children’s Hospital of Richmond and the Community Memorial Healthcenter to the VCU health systems.
The nominee for the next dean will have to continue the progress and expansion of the system while at the same time improving the health system’s national reputation, according to Rao.
