Robert L. (Bob) Smith, a retired Tenet Healthcare Corp. executive, is the new interim CEO of the beleaguered Parkland Health & Hospital System. The Dallas health system's board of managers made the appointment during a regularly scheduled executive session Wednesday morning.
Smith will replace Thomas Royer, MD, who has served as interim CEO since Dec. 2011 and will remain in that position until his contract expires at the end of this month. Smith is not expected to take the helm until mid-September.
Smith comes to Parkland at a critical time. The safety net hospital is racing the clock to resolve serious deficiencies that threaten patient safety as well as the facility's financial survival. The hospital has until April 2013 to work its way through a 400-item federally mandated corrective action plan (CAP) to address Parkland's shortcomings.
"Bob has extensive experience doing just what we need him to do: taking an organization facing significant challenges and turning it around," said Debbie Branson, chair of Parkland's board of managers. "With his engagement, we finish a task we started a few weeks ago when we named other new members of our senior leadership team, all selected because of their experience transforming challenged organizations."
Smith retired in December 2011 as the senior vice president of operations for Tenet Healthcare's central states region. He is credited with masterminding the struggling region's successful turnaround. In 2000, Smith was recruited by Clarent Hospital Corp. in Houston to complete a complex restructuring of the company and its hospitals. In between, he managed a three-state hospital region for Universal Health Services.
At Parkland, Smith's most urgent task will be to lead the effort to complete the tasks outlined in the CAP.
In recent months there has been growing concern that Parkland's systemic issues are thwarting improvement efforts. The June progress report from Alvarez & Martin, the independent safety consultant hired to oversee the CAP process, was critical of the number of patient care, patient safety, and adverse events that continued to occur at Parkland despite the implementation of a CAP, the daily presence of A&M, and "numerous state visits regarding adverse patient events."
In the report, A&M consultants placed blame on the inability of some members of the hospital's senior management team to drive "a true operations turnaround situation."
Within days of that report Debbie Branson announced a reorganization of the senior staff.
While it's unknown if Dr. Royer's departure is directly related to the A&M report, he has come under fire for taking action without board approval. The board's very public rebuke of his pick for chief implementation officer left many questioning if Royer had board support for the task at hand.
A national search is under way for a permanent CEO, but Smith is not expected to be a candidate for the position. According to the press release announcing his appointment, Smith will "serve as interim CEO until a permanent leader is named."
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
