A report from the American College of Healthcare Executives found 18 percent of U.S. hospitals had new chief executive officers in 2014, lower than the record 20 percent turnover rate from the previous year.
Since 1981, the turnover rate has been between 13 percent and 20 percent per year. There were 5,687 short term, general medical and surgical and nonfederal hospitals in 1981 compared with 4,501 in 2014.
“As our data show, elevated turnover among hospital CEOs seems to be a feature of the current healthcare environment,” Deborah J. Bowen, FACHE, CAE, ACHE's president and CEO, said in a news release. “The continuing trend of consolidation among organizations, the increasing demands on chief executives to lead in a complex and rapidly changing environment, and retirement of leaders from the baby boomer era may all be contributing to this continuing higher level of change in the senior leadership of hospitals. The findings also serve as a reminder for healthcare organizations to continue to ensure they have appropriate strategies in place—including robust succession planning—to successfully manage senior leadership changes.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.