Cleveland Clinic names new CEO

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation announced that physician Delos Cosgrove, 63, the clinic's chairman of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, will replace another physician, Floyd Loop, as chief executive officer effective in January 2005. Cosgrove and Loop will work together during a transition period. Cosgrove, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine who earned his undergraduate degree from Williams College of Williamstown, Mass., is a world-renowned heart surgeon who has innovated minimally invasive surgical techniques and holds 18 patents for medical products, the most in clinic history. He joined the clinic in 1975 and becomes the fifth CEO since its founding in 1921, all of whom were physicians. Loop, 67, has served in that role since 1989. Cosgove, like his predecessors as clinic CEO, has no previous hospital administrative experience, according to a clinic spokeswoman. He is board certified in surgery and thoracic surgery and served with the U.S. Air Force as a surgeon, earning a Bronze Star in Vietnam. The 10-hospital Cleveland Clinic Foundation earned $50.7 million in net income, but lost $116 million on operations, on $3.9 billion total revenue in 2002, according to the American Hospital Directory. -- by Mark Taylor