One of South Florida’s largest hospital networks to hire a new CEO by May
One of South Florida’s largest public hospitals, Memorial Healthcare System in South Broward, announced a rapid timetable on Thursday in its search for a successor to CEO Aurelio Fernandez, who will retire at the end of April after six years at the helm of a $2.3 billion healthcare network that includes six hospitals, urgent care centers, a nursing home and 14,000 full-time employees.
After growing Memorial Healthcare’s footprint with new medical facilities, partnerships and expanded services, and increasing its workforce and annual revenues, Fernandez, who was named CEO in 2016, said he was ready to step down after a 46-year career in healthcare.
“The last six years has been one of my most gratifying experiences in my career,” said Fernandez, 69, who started in healthcare in 1976. “But the last two years have been the most challenging in my whole career.
COVID’s stressful toll on hospitals
“I have never, and it doesn’t go for me, all the employees have never experienced what the hospitals and healthcare givers — I call them heroes — have gone through over the last two years,” he said. “It’s been a very stressful situation on everyone’s part.”
Fernandez’s employment contract with Memorial Healthcare expires at the end of April, and the hospital system’s board of commissioners has launched a national search for a successor, retaining the firm WittKieffer, which specializes in recruiting healthcare executives.
Memorial Healthcare said in a press release that WittKieffer began its work in October 2021 by meeting with the system’s “leaders and physicians” to identify opportunities and challenges ahead and to craft the “ideal profile” of the next CEO.
The South Broward Hospital District’s Board of Commissioners, whose members are appointed by the governor to oversee the taxpayer-supported Memorial Healthcare System, have received background information on interested candidates and scheduled a first round of interviews for March 16 and 17.
Fernandez said there are 10 candidates for CEO, and that one of them is an internal applicant who works at Memorial Healthcare. None of the candidates have been named.
Finalists will be selected and invited for in-person interviews in late March and throughout April, Memorial Healthcare said, during which time they will meet with leaders, physicians and others. Once interviews are completed, the board will meet and select the next chief executive.
Fernandez was named CEO in April 2016 by the South Broward Hospital District Board of Commissioners. Fernandez had served as chief operating officer and interim CEO prior to being appointed.
He is a longtime South Florida healthcare executive with 45 years’ experience. He previously led numerous for-profit hospitals in South Florida, including Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale and Hialeah Hospital.
He followed longtime former CEO Frank Sacco, who had a more than 40-year career with the hospital system, which took him from assistant director of housekeeping to the corner suite in the corporate office. Sacco guided Memorial Healthcare’s growth from a single hospital in Hollywood to one of the nation’s largest comprehensive healthcare networks.
Partnership with North Broward district
Fernandez continued growing the mammoth healthcare system and most recently announced a partnership with the North Broward Hospital District, which covers Broward County north of Interstate 595, to build a new hospital in Sunrise.
During his time as CEO, Fernandez “focused on five strategic initiatives,” said Kerting Baldwin, a Memorial Healthcare spokeswoman, “including expanding clinical integration models, bringing together safety net hospitals and statewide collaboration throughout the pandemic to take care of the community, and extending telehealth at Memorial while maintaining high ratings in safety per Leapfrog and financial growth and stability for Memorial, based on industry financial ratings.”
Since March 2020, Memorial Healthcare has weathered pandemic surges that sent record numbers of patients to the system’s hospitals with COVID-19. Administrators were forced to create space for beds in conference rooms and hallways. Pandemic surges, particularly the omicron wave that is now receding, also stretched staff thin as the virus infected doctors, nurses, therapists and others who were forced to miss work and quarantine.
But while COVID-19 has tested the mettle of its healthcare workers, the pandemic has also increased the hospital system’s patient service revenue from $1.99 billion in 2020 to $2.15 billion in 2021, according to Memorial Healthcare’s audited financial statements. South Florida hospitals also have received pandemic relief funding through the federal CARES Act and American Rescue Plan that have helped facilities cover lost revenue and additional costs due to COVID-19.
High staffing costs amid pandemic
Fernandez said that’s only part of the financial picture for hospitals. He said hospitals have been forced to hire travel nurses to make up for staffing shortages, and to pay incentives and shift differentials to keep up with the surges in patients due to the pandemic.
He said Memorial Healthcare’s use of travel nurses, incentives and premium pay increased operating costs by $20 million a month.
“Is that sustainable? That’s $240 million a year. That is not sustainable,” he said. “You might have had a windfall in 2021. But moving forward … this is going to be ongoing for the next few years, and who’s going to pay for this?”
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 12:33 PM.
