John B. Chessare, MD, has been named president/CEO of GBMC HealthCare, effective June 14, 2010. He succeeds John R. Saunders, Jr., MD, who was interim president/CEO following the resignation of Laurence M. Merlis in January. Chessare served as president of Caritas Christi Health Care System's Caritas Norwood Hospital, a 264-bed hospital located just outside of Boston, MA, from September 2005 through October 2008. Most recently, Chessare has been a consultant specializing in patient flow and patient satisfaction while reducing costs. Additionally, he served as faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Institute for Healthcare Optimization.
WakeMed Health & Hospitals has named Thomas G. Gettinger executive vice president and COO, effective June 28. Gettinger joins WakeMed from Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro, NC. During his nearly 20-year tenure at Moses Cone, Gettinger served most recently as executive vice president for the Moses Cone Health System and president of Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, a 546-bed hospital in Greensboro.
Catholic Healthcare Partners has named Steven Mickus its new COO. Mickus has already been serving as CEO of the organization's northern division, a role he will continue, the Business Courier of Cincinnati reports. The division includes seven hospitals in northwest Ohio. James May, CEO of Mercy Health Partners, which is Catholic Healthcare Partners' central division, is also taking on an expanded role. He will, while continuing as Mercy' CEO, lead CHP's newly created Senior Health and Housing Division, a systemwide service line focused on long-term care and senior housing. The COO position comes open as long-serving COO David Jimenez takes over leadership of the Mercy Health Partners' Tennessee region through Dec. 31. He will then retire.
After months of speculation, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint Harold Varmus, MD, as Director of the National Cancer Institute. Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, and recent co-chair of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has served as the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City since January 2000.
About one-third of employers subject to major requirements of the new healthcare law may face tax penalties because they offer health insurance that could be considered unaffordable to some employees, a new study says. The study, by Mercer, one of the nation's largest employee benefit consulting concerns, is based on a survey of nearly 3,000 employers. It suggests that a little-noticed provision of the law could affect far more employers than Congress had assumed, the New York Times reports.
WakeMed has opened a new, $99 million tower that houses Raleigh, NC's first children's hospital. The four-story building also adds 41 rooms for cardiovascular care and 20 cardiac intensive care beds. WakeMed's expansion is the latest in a string of major construction projects at Raleigh-area hospitals. Last year, UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill opened a $207 million cancer center and announced plans to build a new hospital in Hillsborough. And Duke University Medical Center is in the midst of a $700 million building campaign that will add a cancer center and main hospital pavilion.