Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis, announced that Rulon Stacey will succeed Mark Eustis, who retired at the system's president and CEO more than a year ago as Fairview faced inquiries into its billing and collection practices.
Stacey, the outgoing president of the University of Colorado Health, will join Fairview on Nov. 4. He will succeed Charles Mooty, Fairview's board chairman, who has served as the system's interim CEO since Eustis' departure.
In August, Stacey announced he would step down from the University of Colorado Health, which was formed by a 2012 joint venture between Poudre Valley Health System and the University of Colorado Hospital. Stacey was previously CEO of Poudre Valley.
Stacey will join Fairview as the system rebounds from the billing controversy and a failed deal with Sanford Health, a Sioux Falls, S.D.-based system that owns or operates 33 hospitals in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Fairview met with scrutiny in early 2012 after Minnesota's attorney general launched an inquiry into Accretive Health, the billing and collection company under contract with Fairview to collect patient bills. The attorney general alleged the company aggressively sought to collect from patients in the emergency room while they received treatment.
Accretive settled with the state within months. The company did not admit any wrongdoing, but paid $2.5 million and agreed not to do business in Minnesota for at least two years.
This year, Fairview drew scrutiny from Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson over talks with Sanford Health. The controversy prompted Sanford's President and CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft to call off the talks. The potential deal lacked critical support, Krabbenhoft said, without which a merger would be “inconceivable and unacceptable.”
Jennifer Amundson, a spokeswoman for Fairview, said in an e-mail that officials declined interviews.
Fairview ended its last fiscal year in December 2012 with operating income of $108 million on revenue of $3.2 billion.
For the year that ended in December 2011, the most recent year for which data is public, Eustis received total compensation of $1.5 million. Stacey earned $1.7 million as the top executive of Poudre Valley during the same year.
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